No, you wouldn't want me. Me, wadded up like a scrap of old poetry on the carpet, everything I want from you gushing down my face in a pathetic display of heart ache. Cheeks soaked, lungs crushed and unable to inflate properly. My life is cleaving down the middle and breaking at the seams and I am powerless to stop it. And even now, I can feel flowers blooming up between the fissures. Something is breaking down to make room for something building up. But I have to shed this skin first, to shake off the two-ton weights piled on my shoulders and crack whatever concrete shell I have constructed these past years. I am ready for this all to burn away, to burn away, to burn away, to ignite and blaze for hours, days, weeks, until naught but a few licking flames are left, and at last I am reborn, alone and raw and vulnerable and fresh. And ready. And stronger. And whole. Fire-yellow wings stretching from my spine. Feathers itching for wind. Eyes like embers in the dead of night. Hot and waiting for the breeze to come. I will be incandescent soon.