Burn. by Kelli J Gavin

I catch fire more often than I care to admit

I catch feelings that fan the flame

I wonder if others burn the way I do

I wonder if they have pulled all the alarms

You can only fuel the fire for so long

You can’t watch from afar

I burn up rather quickly

My throat tightens

My hands wring

My eyes wince from the smoke

I wipe the soot from my skin

My feet tread carefully

Not sure where to turn

Not sure if the floor will hold

The beams crash behind me

The flames shoot up each wall

Five alarm fire I am afraid

No one cares to respond

The flame is extinguished

Usually by me creating distance

The ruins are all I have left.

The embers continue to smolder

I have to work at regaining my composure

I don’t have anything to cling to

It must be obvious

I sweep up the remnants

Nothing left to piece back together

At  least the walls have been scrubbed

New rugs have been laid

All prepared for the next time I burn

Kelli J Gavin lives in Carver, Minnesota with Josh, her husband of an obscene amount of years and they have two crazy kids. She is a Writer, Professional Organizer and owns Home & Life Organization and a small Jewelry Company.  Look for Kelli’s first book of short stories and poems in 2019. You can find her work with The Ugly Writers, Sweatpants & Coffee, Writing In a Woman’s Voice, The Writers Newsletter,  Writers Unite!, Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Rye Whiskey Review, Spillwords, Mercurial Stories, 121 Words, HerStry, Ariel Chart, The Basil O’Flaherty, PPP Ezine, Southwest Media, Otherwise Engaged, Pleather Skin, Paper.Li, The New Ink Review, among others.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
Find Kelli on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @KelliJGavin
Blog found at kellijgavin@blogspot.com