Stolen Moments

 I'm actually quite attached to this piece. I wrote in on a near-winter night in the dark with only a candle to illuminate the paper. It was pretty awesome to write by candle, it's somethign I don't do very often. So, anyways, enjoy! 

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Careful moments
when I treat everything and everyone
          (even me)
with a gentle respect,
like a glass world
you shake to make it snow.

Stolen moments
of quiet thoughts
of poetry whispered in my head.

Reflecting moments
of candlelight
watching as my soft exhalation
causes great delight,
flames swirling and leaping
like a ballet dancer
on her toes.

Grayscale moments
when some godlike hand
reaches down
and lifts away the mask of busy sights
leaving me this beautiful
world
of only muted colors
and soft, natural sounds.

Beautiful moments
when the churning waves of insecurities
calm
and leave me to look
in the glass
and decide
who I am.

Of Ash

I sink to my knees

and bury my hands in the earth

lifting the fine, dry soil

and letting it slip

through my fingers.

I twirl a fallen tree branch

like a baton

until I fly to my feet and scream

and fling it from me

in a fit of horror,

because for a moment

I wished it was a stone

and the Earth

only ash.

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Okay, thanks for reading! This is something I wrote a few months ago, so don't read it too critically. A lot of my poetry and some of my short stories involve fire because, out of the four elements, I much prefer water over any of the others and so fire is kind of scary for me... Anyways, I hope you liked it!

Reaching Freedom

 Okay, here it is. My first post of something I've written. Does is make me nervous? Absolutely. Please don't rip it apart if you comment on it, but I would like some feedback.
It's supposed to be a little creepy, a little weird, and definitely not ordinary. 
Thanks for reading, please enjoy!!

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It's the same as always.
     Every night I flick the lighter and hold it to the edge of the page. Every night it catches almost immediately. Every night I feel the warmth of the flames and let the paper go just before the warmth turns to heat. Every night the burning page hits the water with the faintest hiss.
     And every night I wake up.
     But tonight a fleeting image crosses my mind: something, or maybe someone, trapped. Caged, like a bird. For the first time I notice words typed across the front of the paper, but the corner has already caught fire and I do not have time to read them before they are devoured by the thirsty tongues of flame, the fire that I am beginning to feel the warmth of in my fingertips.

Something...

Something trapped.

     This time I hold on to the paper as it burns, the sweetest fire licking its way closer and closer and closer to my skin...

     Curiously, the fire does not burn me. It is not a sense of searing agony, as I would have thought, to have my hand, wrist, arm, shoulder immersed in flame. In fact, as the flames wrap around my arms and catch in my hair, I laugh at the strange sensation they bring, a feeling I can only describe as bubbly. 

     The flames have left the paper; it crumbles to gray flecks of dust and flies away at the slightest breath of wind, a wind that only fuels the flames consuming me. I stand perfectly still as the fire eats away at my arms, as it travels down my spine and up from my feet and surrounds me totally. It is the most glorious feeling, to be encased in flames that do not cause any sort of pain. 

     I feel as light as air. The fire is everywhere, sparking on the ends of my eyelashes, smoldering deep in my bones. Under my piercing gaze, the fire does it's work steadily, until it is leaving first my fingertips, then my toes, my feet and palms my legs, my arms, my stomach, my shoulders, my throat, until I am free of the flames. I exhale, and suddenly I am caught in the wind. I take one last glance at my crumbling gray body before I allow what is left of my eyes to be swept away on the breeze, ashes in the wind.

     The skin that held me is unraveling.

          My cage is opening.