Shadows Into Light

Burnout

My clothes first catch on fire,

the smoke fills in my lungs,

but I simply lay there.

The ground was the coolest part

but it can't stop the fire as I lay there,

I watch as my skin melts from my bones,

pooling on the tile floor.

My shiny white bones,

who have never seen the sunlight,

begin to also melt,

leaving my being as a puddle.

I am allowed to stay in the liquid stage,

for a minute,

the feeling of tiredness finally is washed away

with my physical form.

But I was not allowed to rest for long,

for my goo was swirled and picked up,

thrown into a melting pot.

The heat was unimaginable,

as I was being picked up and down

in the liquid fire.

I slowly take form again,

but as wax,

as I was being violently thrown

from the hot pot,

where fire danced,

to the cold pot,

where nothing lived.

The process of becoming

a waxed figure takes time.

My body begins to take form once again

as I am flung from pot to pot.

My melted skin and bones,

are melded together

and I become a candle.

After all of my physical essence

was collected around a wick,

I am relieved from the torture of the pots.

Then a match was struck,

and I wanted to move

far, far away from the heat,

for I am already too tired and hot.

My wick is lit,

and I watch powerless

as hot wax rolled off of my meshed form,

pooling once again around where I stood.

I begin to dribble,

and become smaller,

falling back towards the ground

as the fire eats me up.

I can feel my life

leaving my wax formed

as I start to lose shape,

becoming a puddle once more.

These hallucinations of watching

me become a candle and burning out,

dance in the forefront of my vision

as my very real body,

lays motionless on the tile ground.

My clothes stick to me,

as the tiredness seeps out of me

like the sweat on my stomach.

I lay as motionless as I can,

to escape the heat of the room,

on this October afternoon.

I look as if I was dead,

the only clue of life

is from my shallow breathing.

For I am partly dead,

just a shell of someone,

because my mind

is burnt out.