Fire

The music pounds through you, exciting your blood, foot tapping in time as the gravely vocals and the drums throw you forward, lift you up, wrap you in a safe cocoon of noise and rage.

The music feeds your passions, your passions strengthening the music. Body swaying with the beat, brain going red.

The cold fire erupts along your veins, a single droplet of rage ignites the volatile passions coursing through you.

Once again the cathedral of your flesh is ablaze, from the altar of the heart to the rafters of the soul. This time is different though, this time isn’t about fighting the fire. This time is about letting the fire burn, letting it rage.

“Let’s burn this cathedral to the ground!” the fire roars.

Tapestries of memories already alight, the fire leaps from memory to memory to nerve to reason, dancing like a playful little child allowed to do whatever it wants.

Flesh bubbles, blackens and chars. The walls darken, spasm in raucous agony and amid it all you dance in and out of the inferno - your partner and your choreographer.

Throwing your head back you bellow at the top of your voice, “Burn this wasted cathedral to the ground, within and without!”

Your choreographer hears your command and the beat of the music changes – fiercer, angrier… tribal. The blood of the rhythm sings to the blood in you, blinded by your passions you let your partner lead the dance and together the pair of you explode throughout the cathedral of your flesh. This time nothing is left unscathed, all is blackened, all is charred.

The fire lifts you upwards, embers and licks of flame chase you up to the rafters of your soul. Below you the fire of your passions mushrooms up to meet your body once more.

A long slow inhalation pulls the burning miasmic cloud up, between charred lips and back inside you. It slips down your gullet like jelly, squirming through your innards until you feel its warm passionate embrace wrapping around your heart.

Alone at the apex of the cathedral your body starts to drop, twisting, spiralling, falling between the walls of flesh. The air whistles passed your ears, the stench of the smouldering remains assail your nostrils, the chills bites into your skin, a rime of frost turning you white, your eyes focused on the raggedly breathing flagstones as they rush up to greet you.

As you strike, your whole body bursts. An eruption of fire, purifying and white hot, engulfs the cathedral once more and from the interior of the blast furnace something begins to move.

The light recedes and your cathedral is rebuilt, clean and pure once more. No scars, no wounds, like a new-born into the world.

Alone you stand at the altar of your heart, renewed.