Burning

I am haunted,
like many,
by the waxy ghosts of a past that I was promised would stay with me.
A life that I burned to
without thinking it, too, would rot from the inside out;
like anything else I ever held in my hands and loved
They tell you beauty is impermanent and that is so.
I want to tape the past to my eyes and wear it as a reminder of what i have left to mourn
When disappointment and the foul smell of rotted teeth weren’t the only things that lined my view.
Ghosts with halitosis and shattered breaths
Hot down my neck.
A broken reminder of what is lost and loved.

What cruelty
To live in a world where the licking beauty of a fire is only ever remembered by its ashes