Jeremiah 11

Your houses burned between my thighs, rose-petals falling on cheeks like flames. Your red hair was a horse's mane; together, we rode through desert winds. I poured water into your lips - a pitcher of cracked clay. I traced the scars on your neck with my fingers, and taught my lips to read the poems on your back - like alabaster, they were cold and unbreakable. Stones survive fire - they remain, like corpses interred by black ash, until the day a pauper sifts through the debris, hoping gold will tar her soot-stained palms. But we were never gold - only silver, waiting to be tarnished by the specks of time that coat our bodies like dust, or flames.  The red glistens as it merges with our bodies' ashes. Who can focus on the color of flames? It is only when they lick your ear, that you notice the blue of their eyes.