the flame bearer and the flame

something that moves like a ritual, a call and a response between two souls who burn for one another - unkindly - like a myth, like a war, like a prayer.

[her]

i want you to possess me - not gently, not kindly, but as one claims fire when frozen, with hands blistering just to feel something alive. take me with the violence of reverence, as if my body were both offering and altar.

[him]

you speak of ruin as if it's yours to offer, as if your undoing wouldn't undo me first. you do not know what it means to be worshipped by something so willing to burn.

[her]

let me be the breath you gasp between confessions; the air you beg for when the gods turn away. i want to live beneath your skin - not near your heart, but deeper - where nothing gentle survives. i want my name burned into you, not like a poem, but like a brand seared into the darkest corners of your being where no one else is allowed to look.

[him]

you want to be devoured but i have tasted hunger like that before. it does not fill. it hollows. it leaves behind only teeth and prayer. you want me to say your name like a sacred thing. i already do. it lingers in my mouth like blood i chose not to spit out.

[her]

take me. all of me. the holy, the unholy. my mouth, my grief, my ruin. take the worship i carry in every nerve. consume me until nothing remains but the ghost of my voice in your throat, whispering like a litany: mine, mine, mine.

[him]

you ask me to bury you inside me - but you are already there, in the quietest moments of my cruelty, in the spaces between my ribs where breath turns to ache.

[her]

because i was never made to be untouched. i was made to be ruined, if it meant being ruined by you.

[him]

you say my name with such reverence that i almost forgot i am human. so come to me then, not as offering, but as consequence. let me carry the burden of your wanting until it splits me open. let me feel your ruin.

[her]

say my name like it's the last truth left in a godless world. say it like you're drowning. say it the way saints must speak when they fall out of faith and into flesh.

[him]

when i take you - when i take all of you - know that it is not mercy. it is not salvation. it is love ... and that is far more terrifying.