Trial By Fire: A Guest Post

A fiery piece on the subject of heat, by a dear friend who shall be known, for now, as:

Freyja

TRIAL BY FIRE

Smoldering.

Embarrassment. Flush. Blush. Pain. Tears—streams of molten rancor careening down the mountainsides of my cheeks. My face is hot. My heart is cold. You never lied to me, only very carefully misled me. And I fell for it. The tears won’t stop. They just keep rolling through the days and the nights while you are there and when you are not. And suddenly I am alone and the icy chill of my heart begins to boil and froth and rage, and I am heat personified again. Rage, yes. Anger. Hatred, vile and burning down my throat and into my intestines. I am consumed by fire as I scream and yell and welcome the salty tears and the feelings of bitterness and darkness and betrayal.

I hate you, yes hate you, for the first time in our entwined lives I despise you and every ounce of happiness you have. I can feel my feelings being sacrificed on the pyre of your not quite lies and your silver tongued promises and your pleasantries and compliments and unyielding declarations of something not quite akin to love. You scorched me to my marrow, burnt me deep, deep down to my soul. But you cannot kill me with fire. I am made of fire and flame and steel and dark things. Do you think you’re the first person who has tried? Feed me. Feed me is all you’ve done. I’ve suckled at the breast of my hatred and your carelessness and I feel renewed.

Rising.

I am steady flame and my strength is my succor. I am yielding, warmth, burning, pleasure, epicenter. I am taking back control. Each body beneath mine, on top of mine, inside of mine renews me further. I am invigorated. I am sultry. I am cloying, clinging heat. I am flames climbing higher, licking the sky. I feel my power returning. You ebb at the edges of my glow, trying to rein me in, to capture me again. I take small pleasure in knowing that my radiance cuts you. I am small in that way, in that one way, but I burn too brightly to care for justice paid the hard way.

And then? There is another. Unintended, unwanted, unasked for. I am surprised and shaken. Deep into the darkness, across the night, I can see him glowing. A twin flame to match my own. I’ve never felt such fever. Not with you, not with the unnamed and faceless they and thems. I’ve never felt such passion. Something sparks inside of me; he is heat lightning across the evening sky. Every word an ignition that threatens to send me higher. I am the fire, but the heat I feel when he touches me is unmistakable ardor.

Burning.

My mind reels as the firestorm overpowers me. Am I breathing through the heavy heat? Can I feel anything but the sensuous lick of flame here and here and there? Sweat gathers in the strangest places–it beads between my breasts and pools in my bellybutton. I feel it slithering between my shoulder blades, slick and salty as it slides down the dimples of my lower back. His hands touch me and I am ablaze. One kiss could burn us both to ash.

Fever delirium. The sweet ecstasy of the little death. We are an inferno, he and I. Together we could raze time and space and being. He is a conflagration, threatening to rip me open and live inside of me. He scalds me and I beg for more. His name is branded across my heart. He is my eternal flame. He is home and hearth. He is my warmth and I am his.

–Freyja