I Live Yet

Do you feel the heat coming off my body? The smell of fresh sweat, warm bodies, and a fire in the soul unlike any other. Can you feel my pulse? Faster when you think of me. You can trace the blue lines of my veins but you cannot map their meaning. Does it frighten you, my mortality? Not death, but destruction. Do you forget yourself, remembering me? Does it worry you that my taste is gone? Clean skin dirtied by time and work and the desire forget. In forgetting, do you remember? The sound of my oft unsteady breathing is no longer heard in the distance. You cannot hear my laugh in the crowd anymore. Do you remember, although you forget me, that I still live? I still sleep in an empty bed and I still drink coffee across from an empty chair, much as I always have, even when you remembered me. Do you feel the heat I have always had-- angry\sad\happy all at once because I am young and youth is flame. Do you worry about the ashes that are filling you in minute by minute? I see them and I run from the dying embers. I no longer find your coolness calming. If you were to blow me out, I would only revive. I revive. And in reviving I remember my mortality. Does it frighten you? Not death, but destruction.