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i'm ready to drink every flame and more

Summary:

Nandor is a skilled writer. For seven centuries, his journals have immortalized all sorts of things—letters, lists, diary entries, and even poetry.

(The poetry has gotten more frequent in the past fifteen years.)

Herein lies an example: Nandor waxes eloquent on fire, destruction, and the nature of being in love.

Notes:

You will all listen to my Nandor-is-smart-and-eloquent agenda, and you will LIKE it !!!

Thank you thank you to Story for beta reading this for me and giving great feedback (especially since it's not your typical prose fiction) <3

The title of this poem is from Fountain of Fire by Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Perhaps I would know what this feeling is if I could

behold it in the sunlight. I could name it, I think, with

the hair atop my head soaking up sweet warmth from the sky.

 

Perhaps I would know what to do with this feeling if I could

talk it through in the language I heard on my first

day alive, the one the centuries drank my veins dry of.

 

Perhaps I could stomach this feeling if I could

stomach anything at all, but I am sick to death of even lifeblood by now—

perhaps someday I’ll be hungry enough to let you nourish me.

 

These are the things I tell myself when I cannot 

fathom the deadly luminance of adoring you—that the boundless 

future holds possibilities greater than the biting terror I carry.

 

And oh, I am terrified.

 

Have I confessed that to you? Can you hear the dread sitting

heavy in my throat when I open my mouth to speak your name?

Do you notice the way I kindle with the holiness of you?

 

This feeling is an inferno I keep at bay scrupulously, because

at the end of the night, I would rather only one of us be set ablaze.

Although I cannot define this passion, I know one thing:

 

I cannot bear the thought of your burns.

 

So put me in the sunlight, zendegim (that, at least, I recall).

Kiss me with the curtains open and toss my coat aside.

Teach me the meaning of sparks dancing between my ribs.

 

Perhaps I would know what this feeling is if I let it

swallow me whole. I could call it love, I think, with

the fire of it consuming me, changing me, returning me 

 

to dust.

Notes:

zendegim (زندگیم) = "my life"

I'm on tumblr @nutmeg-cider still yelling about poetry and vampires and sometimes both at the same time

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