God Not Only Did I Walk
by Lauren K. Carlson
I frolicked with fire and flames: the fire, transgression. The flames: forbidden, did not set me ablaze, I invited the heat. With tenderness asked for tinder, wanted touch but would not reach. I imagined reaching. I stroked my fingers, my fingers as in matches against grit, as in against your roughened skin, you torched my lips with the hot coal of your thumb, your mouth. I wondered but resisted. I stopped.
Held by contact: your eyes. How the gaze anchored my neck, framed. Real, your unsteady hands deep water, rising. How a cresting flood darkens lowlands, you stirred my scalp and I tilted away.
Preferred instead to dream of burning. Preferred hot swallows of broiling clay for my throat’s open need. Spark yet not incendiary. Did I pass through? I plunged.
I confess I find no reason to leave kindling alone. I grow gills. I spit silt. I will have no balm.
Lauren K. Carlson lives in northern lower Michigan and is the author of the chapbook Animals I Have Killed. A graduate of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, you can find more of her work in Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, Amethyst Review, Pirene's Fountain, and Pleiades: Literature in Context (among others). For more see www.laurenkcarlson.com.
