she has the ability to paint the air around her,
leaving a trail of flimsy neon green that curls into the wisps of pink left behind from the lipstick in her smile.
today she paints heavily with red, angry stomps staining the ground with smears of blood and fists punching a neat row of sizzling holes dripping with lava.
i admire the smoke tailing her blazing hair and wonder sadly why her eyes have burned themselves blind,
leaving vast empty caves except the waterfall that cascades over
the edge into a howling puddle of
orange agony in her
sleeves.

i cry into the void, grabbing at the faceless figures,
but shadows cannot hear: fuzzy,
grey outlines scampering
back and
forth in a muddle
of voices, muffled
by radioactive muzzles.

i sense a friendly song
a woman, ethereal
glowing spastic, jovial liberty bounding across the streets,
radiating glory and knowledge.
i beg her to wrap
her blueness around my uncontrollable wildfire, to blanket
her calm, gentle wings around the flames, to extinguish
the screaming that pierces fingers with needles and shatters glass with swords, to sing
her melodies until the thousand suns she bears on her back are lullabied to sleep.

i drink
from the river of her long, flowing dress, nectar that tastes like
hope, and a bittersweet longing i follow upstream until i see
the mouth of the river
is just an old recorder on repeat playing century long patriotic marches,
eyes mechanic nodes distracted by blaring, defiant flags saluting in the distance
legs crawling past, center in a web of chains where electric signals slither into the collars of the faceless figures
song echoing off the walls of the cage, trapped
with the figures and my fire in the void.

i watch my wildfire burn herself down – no one
to cover the red blotches on the floor, to
fan away the murky maroon swallowing her whole, to
clean up the polluted ocean she struggles to wade through, to
keep her from pushing deeper in desperate hope
that her orange tears will suffocate the flames,
every step drowning
in her own despair.