The Funeral of Fire: Desire, Sex, and What Remains

you open the door before you knock
and i am already undressed, not with lust,
but with the burden of knowing

i have chased echoes before they had throats
and you—
you come barefoot, armed with wine and mirrors
your mouth stitched shut with velvet promises
your eyes two unspoken vowels trembling

do you remember
that first blink that was not yours?
desire wore a face then,
brief, electric,
like the last matchstick at the altar of a drowned prayer

and i —
i became the temple they forgot to burn


---

you touch me like a question mark
like each fingertip is an asterisk
a footnote in a language no one reads anymore
your hands fumble like burglars
looking for a reason, not a jewel
you do not find it.

i do not offer it.

because desire
never introduces itself at dinner
it crawls under the table, naked and ashamed
biting ankles, waiting for one of us to flinch


---

you think this is about the body?
you poor sweet darling
it’s never about the body
the body is the stage where the funeral is held
but the corpse, oh the corpse is invisible
it died long before
you ever touched me.


---

i once made love with the lights on
just to see if the truth bled
but all i saw was a ceiling fan
twirling like a preacher on acid
and your back—
a landscape of forgotten wars
i wanted to kiss every scar into a lullaby

but lullabies don’t wake the dead
and i am already mourning
what you haven’t even tried to kill yet


---

you say:
i want you
but you mean:
i want to want you
or worse,
i want the version of you
that exists when i am lonely and godless

and i
i reply with an open mouth
but a locked jaw
because saying yes
is often the same as saying
goodbye to another piece of myself


---

sex is not a climax,
it’s a wake.
a procession of moans that smell like past lives
and someone’s perfume—
maybe mine, maybe hers, maybe no one’s
burning slowly on the pillow

you bring me flowers
from the garden of unmet expectations
they wilt the moment they see me
i press them between the pages
of a book we never finished reading

you never liked poetry anyway


---

i once bit your lip so hard
you tasted my resentment
and called it passion

see how well we lie
in rhythm, in thrust,
in the stuttering gospel of skin against skin
we baptize ourselves in sweat
and exit the chapel unsaved


---

do you know what mystery tastes like?
bitter.
like the aftertaste of a dream you wake up from
mid-sentence
like the silence between
what i wanted
and what i said yes to


---

you say:
what are you thinking?
i say:
nothing.
you say:
liar.
and i think:
thank you.

because lies are the only language desire speaks fluently
i lie when i moan
i lie when i tremble
you lie when you stay
we both lie when we climax
and hope to forget everything afterwards

but memory—
memory is the ghost
that f***s you the next morning


---

you reach inside me
but not far enough
never far enough
because the mystery lives in the marrow
not the thighs
and you fear bones
you fear what doesn’t wet your fingers


---

desire wears a black veil
even on our wedding night
it claps slowly when we undress
not out of joy
but out of politeness
as if to say—
how quaint,
these humans still think
they can touch each other and mean it


---

i once wrote your name in ash
it stayed
longer than you did
because even fire
remembers what it consumes

and you—
you forgot me
before you even finished unzipping


---

sex is not a release
it is a ritual
a scream in cursive
performed in front of an altar
where god has already left
and left behind
only a mirror
and a poem
and two strangers
calling each other by the wrong names


---

you whisper:
harder
and i think:
life
you gasp:
don’t stop
and i hear:
i’m still alone
you say:
yes
and i want to ask:
to what?

but the mystery swallows all punctuation
leaves us only ellipses
and soft whimpers pretending to be language


---

in the end,
you lie beside me
already drifting
and i
am still
burning

not from what we did
but from what we failed to
from what we buried
under breath
under bedsheets
under borrowed names


---

so i rise
quietly
dress in the funeral clothes
of another undone longing

desire watches from the corner
unashamed
and still mysterious

while sex—
sex is already cold

flowers in hand
ashes in my mouth
i walk into the morning
as the last mourner

still hoping
no one else arrives.