How could you think you could touch fire and not get burned?

I could ask myself the same.

The night that we met, we agreed to turn the hourglass. We agreed to start the clock on a time neither one of us ever really wanted to end.

You loved my artistic side, my willingness to share my darkness with the world, always hoping to trade my demons for just a bit of light.

I loved your charisma. The way you could make me feel like the most important person in the room, even when I was sure I never could be.

I loved the way you cared for me, and you loved the way I needed it.

I think it was my honesty that scared you away. The way I could know what you were feeling without either one of us ever having to say anything out loud. I think you knew you could not hide from me. You knew this would be one situation where a pretty smile and good excuse wouldn’t be enough to set you free.

I was always hoping I would never have to set you free.

With someone like me, it is either all or nothing. You either put your hand in the fire and learn to love the way the flames caress your skin or you run. You run and you never look back, but you still always hope that someone else will be able to bear my heat. You hope that someone else will not be afraid to get burned.

I often wonder how someone could hold so much darkness yet still manage to burn so brightly. You found me to be so enticing. I was living the life you so deeply craved, so it was only natural that you began to crave me. But was it me that you wanted after all? Or were you hoping to get under my skin so you could get a taste of one of your biggest what if’s without having to give up everything you already knew?

You touched my arm and looked into my eyes and whispered the word, “perfect.” A perfect storm perhaps, but I was far from your textbook definition of “perfect.” Maybe I was the last one to cross off of your list of experiences before you left my city. Maybe devouring an artist was worth more to you than your diploma. Maybe if you could not create, you wanted to inspire. Maybe you knew this was how you wanted it to end all along, and I was the only one left in the dark.

Maybe you have become my muse, and maybe I will never forget you.

Or maybe I will wake up tomorrow covered in ash and remnants of our past, ready to move on to a place where my heat is called warmth and my flames are called heroes for offering protection from the cold.

Maybe I am burning, but I am not going anywhere.