This work was last updated August 28, 2020

I doused my mattress with gasoline at 3 AM
and lay within the fire shivering.
It shyly licked against my body,
beat breath into my lungs,
and returned colour to my tainted skin.
It draped an arm around me,
pressed against me,
until insomnia could not longer squeeze into the empty space
between us.

I slept in my bare skin, cloaked in its warmth,
with our legs intertwined,
and awoke
asphyxiated.
A dwindling inferno on my left.
My charred bones on the right.
I gathered them silently,
desperate to escape
the profound absence of oxygen in my bedroom.

It gazed at me, bemused,
as I crawled toward the window,
burning holes in my back
with its
Empty
Carnivorous
Eyes.

(I doused my mattress with gasoline at 3 AM
and in the morning it engulfed my house)