I am the brightest, most subtle flame of imagination, my hair a cropped tousled purple blending into my unquenched body. Skipping, performing moving hand-stands, tumbling on a finely edged precipice.

It is a razor, honed sharp and meant to draw blood. To either side of me are leaping torrents of fire and emotion: the left holds souls weeping in agony as fire and pain consume them. They've never tasted what it is to leave one's burdens truly behind. The right finds faces smiling in sea green oceans of calm, wafting into one another like torrential waves of majestic luminesence. Little have they known their despairing counterpart and the wisdom it invokes.

"Steam" plays in my ears as I cartwheel across the thin expanse, secured by will alone. I dance, I sing, I rejoice in the sheer beauty of being who I am and being that through dedication and perseverance.

I am the unquentionable fire that burns as passion in your breast. I am alive, yet thoroughly unbalanced. Harmony seems to drip from my fingertips like honey dew and wine, but I know it is the opposite of despair and torment. I am caught, finding balance rather dull. I exercise minimal control, enough not to seem annoying. My lungs expand with the sky and I see you as love, as part of everything, in ways that would make you weep. If you know me, this is how I feel for you, about you, and know you.

My projects are well, I am seeing someone tomorrow, I had a thoroughly engrossing and lovely conversation with an old man about God and creationism vs. evolution...I float on zeniths of clouds, barely gracing the upper horizon as I charge headlong toward the blue oceans beneath me. I flit, turn, and ripple the water beneath me as I remember what being a human bird is like. Hair ripples around me, unbound and as chaotic as I am.

How I wish I could take your hand and lead you through this chemical imbalance. The sites are too many, the sights too splendid: grottos of green emeralds and deep amethysts grow like stalagmite wild fires, brushing gently past my cheek as the winds rush and reveal green meadows, pastures softly running fingers underneath me. Memories of my youth run below me, happy toddlers tripping over themselves to wave as if taken from the ending scenes of "NeverEnding Story."

I leave flames in my wake: valleys scorched and ruined. Yet, other hearths are desolate of sadness, alive by the logs I helped them set afire in themselves.

But somepeople who felt warm beside it are burned and hurt by my nature, by sour changes in our relationships. They ignored me, I ignored them..by right all was said and done. The fun continues..yet I smell the smoke of their anger and sadness, pungent and acrid.

They stuck their hands into me, knew it was a flame they no longer wanted to touch...yet still did it. When we've moved on, how many times do we try to gain warmth from a dead piece of wood, a log that no longer burns? Why can they not see the burned bridges? And if so, why walk across?

I fly by still. Who am I to be a living flame? I just am. I try not to hurt, but inevitably others wish to hurt themselves.

Who can grasp fire...who can grasp me? Well...at the least they enjoy my warmth, hmm? Hmm. Yes, that makes me happy, like a set of friends gathered around a symbol of their unity.

I bring about the dream time. Just look into me and see the movements. It is difficult, painful, consuming all of you...but in every fire rests a lulling calm, amusingly false in its ability to catch anything and invoke its presence, its magnificently beautiful, fearful power.

If you'd like, see your own...just look inside me.

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