Metaphors for the ones who burn

3/23 - Typewriter

My Type was written by my youth on a Typewriter.
My Type is a combination of nature and nurture.
My Type is presumed fixed and unchangeable.
I curse the Typewriter and I hope to alter it.
The more I write love, the more I am lost,
because I continue the cursed pattern.
Can I escape the Typewriter's fate?
Time is slipping by, and I lose.
I hope I can rewire myself.
If my Type is concrete,
then I must never
fall again, for
it is not
love.
Love...
The love
I choose destroys
me and leaves me without
hope, solace, or health, as it drains me.
I do not understand why I do this, and so I blame
the Typewriter and place responsibility out of my control.
However, I did create my Typewriter, albeit subconsciously.
I made my Typewriter to distract me with pleasure and pain.
This pleasure and pain must be of an intricate standard.
I am vaulted further by desire, yet it shambles me.
I hoped that this process would grow a man,
but at this point, I am shattered broken.
I might have to Type new ways that
carve healthier paths that don't
just lead straight down
into destruction.
'Was it ever
love?'
I
type.
'Was I
ever truly in
love? Did I really
want the best for you,
admire you, and understand
you? And even if I did, did you do
the same for me?' My Type must be broken,
because there is no way that is completely true.
I have had women that would kill to know me closer,
yet I don't give them a thought. They were never my Type,
and I know that it is wise to ignore the desperate. 'Maybe', I
shudder, 'my Type truly is proper, and this is as good
as love will get. Always tragic, always broken.'

Ink spilled as my Typewriter began to fume
and hiss. The air started to smell metallic.
God, who created the keys and I, who type,
are both to blame for the mess on my desk.
I want to stop writing, and thus I have for
almost a year, though even still I have found
my Type in the world, devoid of Typewriter.
'Maybe this is my doomed fate', my therapist
agrees, and he asks 'can you work against it?'
I begin to grow hollow from the inside out.
I do not want to work against it. Does my
therapist know what I feel? How I enjoy
burning as much as the cigarette does?
I am worried if I go against my Type, I
would cease to burn aflame. I'd be happy
and healthy, but I'm afraid I would not
be in love. Again, this could just be an
excuse to keep me cornered with my
comfortable and usual choice of crazed
women. Like many things in life, I know
that I must jump and that I must change.
I am afraid to, which is why I've abstained
for all this time. I still do not want to choose
a path forward, and so I stay in place, idly,
as time passes me by like currents in the
ocean. My Typewriter is brok- •