I leave the entryway, door half-shut behind, sway blindly between kitchen and hearth, eyes adjusting to the dark of this house.

Porchlight leaks through curtained glass, sketches a gesture of you, swell of hip thrust back bending to cold stone, hair sparking tinder against cheek. You rise from the hearth to greet me. You do not carry fire: your hands themselves are aflame.

I snuff your fingers one by one against my tongue, fleshy wicks sizzle, pinched. Your palms hang smoke in the moonlight, smudge charcoal in my hair, they ride your arms hard, bareback to the hearth. Glowing wood tantalizes your tiny hands. The drama of combustion makes you bend again, your hands penetrate heat, emerge as coals, shift orange/black toward me across lifelines of magma.

Are you looking up at me or have I grown? Even on tiptoe in front of you, I fail to retrieve my pulse now chiming the kitchen’s spent chandelier.

Your face is a triangle connecting eye, eye, chin and within this polygon, a blushing tripod swells, corner, corner, bottom lip. Let go, “let go”, only to wrap closer, tighter to the dip.

Your glowing hands shoot like stars across a sky innocent of aurora. Their trajectory allows the tongue time to exclaim, but the eye is never certain anything was seen.

Later, I will act as if it is Wednesday though the calendar says Thursday. Then, we’ll have use for nouns, for countdowns. I will try to ignore the warm, pink fossil I carry in my mouth.