Zack Schlagel
Zack is a writer from rural southern Nebraska. His writing mainly includes slam poetry and fiction. Outside of writing Zack is a librarian, participating in FFA, and listening to music. His poetry delves into his mental-health, physical health, and identity.
Scorched Forests
I don’t think of you much anymore,
but every time I do it feels as if I’d swallowed a lit match.
You weren’t the comforting heat of a campfire, instead you were the scorching heat of a forest fire,
Incinerating everything in your path.
Blazing through your family, friends, education, and partners, leaving them as ash and scorched earth.
You’d torched me, left me in second and third degree burns.
The burns traveled down from my brain, to my face, my chest, my stomach, and down to my thighs.
Kory was the only one to notice my flame-wrapped form and doused the flame you held me with.
But even water can’t heal third degree burns.
The burns you left on my brain are the reason I freeze, unable to breathe every time I panic.
And the burns you left on my legs are the reason I’m unable to move from fear when I hear your name.
Your flames might've burnt me
but I felt no fear when I took your precious gifts you gave to me and let flame devour them.
I watched them.
I watched as I burnt away my last connections to you
or what I thought was my last connection.
I don't think of you
but every time the warmth of flames get a little too hot, you appear in my mind and I lose my sense of self.
The burns begin to ache,
resurfacing to harm me once more. until I cool off and you flee from my mind again.
Even now, almost a year later as I revisit this poem my breath quickens with smoke inhalation and I grow dizzy,
as if I am reliving the experience of your heat.
I realize now I was drawn in like a moth to a flame.
Fire scares me still.
I still cower from it, I curse your name when it burns me.
Forest fires take from people,
and you tried to take everything from me.
You try to take everything from anyone.
You burnt away the blinds of my privacy
You singed my friends.
I hope those after me you’ve also trapped
Had your flames extinguished before you burnt them to ash.
How many?
How many girls and boys will you burn like you burnt me.