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sex addiction - Mela Blust

when i was young

i tasted a fire i didn't want

his mouth sent gray, billowy smoke into my lungs

and it's been hard to catch my breath ever since.


i study my irises in the mirror

i think about how fire struggles for oxygen the way that i do

there are only two states - suffocating, or smoldering

somewhere along the way, i chose smoldering


i only want you to see me the way that i see me:

incinerating at a rate that i am barely able to temper

i want you drawn to my warmth so badly

that you are willing to destroy us both



a man at the bar follows me out for a cigarette

and asks me for a light

he wants to say more,

but i accidentally burn his finger


it's not what he wants,

but i think it's what he expects

an exotic accident

painful excitement


at least now

he's familiar with the desire for contact

even if it leaves a nasty scar

imagine living there


you know how you are drawn

to the blaze of flames?

how the glow of a bonfire dilates your pupils

just like lust?


i am a raging wildfire, and i will burn you too.

 

Mela Blust is a trauma survivor, and a mother. Since seeking publication, Mela's work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best Of The Net, and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, Rust+Moth, The Nassau Review, The Sierra Nevada Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Collective Unrest, and many more. Her debut poetry collection, Skeleton Parade, is available with Apep Publications and her second collection, They Found a Woman’s Body, is available with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. She is a contributing editor for Barren Magazine, and can be followed at https://twitter.com/melablust.

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