Fireside

Fireside

By: Talya Langer

A thousand suns collapsing in my chest,

their heat spilling through the cracks of my ribs.

A flood of fire,

the haze of the heat,

a cascade of hot coals crowding my cranium,

The world is on fire,

I am on fire,

and yet

I am drowning.

Losing my life to the weight of air,

the water in my body weighing me down.

Each breath a steaming stone in my lungs,

each second a deadly tidal wave,

each concurrent action acting as a current that pushes me further

from land.

Nothing to hold on to,

No place safe enough,

Nowhere to escape from the crashing, unsafe waves.

The tide will not break.

The world presses in,

I am being swallowed by the current

and burned by my own flame.