Metaphors for the ones who burn

3/3 - Cigarette

I am the unlit cigarette between her nimble lips.
She is the lighter. Her eyes burn. Her smile sparks.
One day, she craved a toxic flame and called my name.
She made smoke from my ashes. I made her lungs gray.
I destroyed her as she breathed me in.
I regretted everything as she twisted me between her fingers, pursed me on her lips, and balanced me on her teeth.

In truth, I never wanted to be lit until she torched me:
I was Mount Pompeii during prosperity.
I was the still air before despair.
I was undetected.
I was. And she was. And that was.

And yet still she crossed parallel lines,
As Eve often does,
Saying words of affection,
Lighting me with her flame,
Those darting eyes, and
As mine had tried to cool hers down,
I remembered how certain types of fires are emboldened by water, counterlogically, and so
The more I cooled her off, the brighter she torched me.

I had destroyed her by merely existing,
and she had destroyed me by merely existing.
Paradoxically, she hadn't destroyed me and
I hadn't destroyed her.
We destroyed our own selves,
Betraying our own selves
With our own choices.

In total,
two choices made:
hers by lighting,
and mine by burning.
We revealed ourselves
as those who crave Hell.

She took me. She smoked my pack.
I enjoyed her fire. Ash I became, almost completely.
I have had others attempt to smoke me, yet their lighter had no fluid, or I hid my cigarette from them, convincing them there was no material left to smoke.

However,
she had it,
the damned spark.

She enjoyed her addiction to me
and I had enjoyed my burning state.
She reminded me that
my purpose was to burn and to please.
She told me I was nothing else,
and as a will weakened by weathering,
I indeed became nothing but a flimsy filter,
deject and cast out...

• • •

Now she is the cigarette between my teeth.
She had burned prior to me. After all,
She was made for fire, and so fire had consumed her.
Eventually, only her butt was left.
Yet still, I pick her up and bite down, but not enough that she squirms and breaks.
I am lighter. My grin the spark. My mind the coil.
I rub her left and right over my excision blades.
I saw a full cig where she saw none.

Before I lit, I studied:
Her soul left with the addicting substance,
Which had cried before.

Dissociate chalice.
Echoes of a woman once was.
She was nothing more than a burnt cig.
Dejected to streets.
Sewer candy.
Despair.
Antithesis of hope.
Yet I craved her still.
Where she believed a lack of substance,
I saw the ideal pack: deep, empty, and hopeless.
I, the lighter, am devoid of flammable liquid entirely: deep, empty, and hopeless.

And so when we met,
My lighter fluid had been depleted,
Her pack had been smoked.

Yet I ignited her with no substance left to my name,
And she burned with no substance left to her name.

I grew angry at her subconscious:
"You say you are depleted,
Yet why do you still burn for me?
How did I light you?
Tell me, love,
Do you believe now,
That love can exist between the damned?
And further, that we are not of the damned?
Rather, we are young and new,
Repented of what we've suffered,
Cleansed by a thousand tears,
Knowing how important love is,
And observant of the miracle that has happened here."

She flung herself into a corner where man would never find her. She had ignored my words, and she had dissociated from our fire, afraid that she still had stake.

Maybe I treasure the gravely dumb...
Those who believe that a lighter runs dry,
And that a cigarette ends...
When comparing the limited to the limitless,
Man often gets lost.
The comparison is always unfair:
The ethereal is limitless,
And so is my love.