Match to Paper

 - for Simon Armitage

Note: wrote this a couple of months ago but have only published it now (October 20th) for some reason!

Take a book of matches and single out
one single shard, one matchstick.
Take the words you'd said, written in blood,
take the parchment and give it the flame:
it wants the flame; it needs it.
Good - take the fire and feed it.

Feed it all those words; hopeless promises;
take all the purity that your heart conjured,
black shapes on white paper,
imaginary kisses, given to the air as if to real 
blood-flushed flesh.
And feed it to the fire, to its maker:

forged in the fires of the heart,
pinch out its ember.
But remember: the fire is carried somewhere -
but where?
In the heart, here. Feel it.
That's where.

Take the fire my dear, place it in your hearth.
And if my own fire needn't kill it, as the self-same gave it birth,
if our love shrouds the flame, protects it, is new, different and kind,
then let its words flutter, burning page-locked on the bitter wind.
If this love is different, if this love is true,
then let its words be burnt in death; ours alone, by others never viewed.