peeling

I am peeling 

My arm, that I cooked with bio-oil,

(trying to remove scars)

Was tanned brown for a

Day

Now it is peeling: new pink skin

Under the flakes.

The same as the rest of me

Burnt

Trying to remove our scars

I am been walking around red

Hot and aching.

Now things have cooled

The burn has settled

And I am peeling

New pink growth coming out underneath.

flame fingers (white hot in the hurtcentre)

Right now
I am an unfocused
Blowtorch

I turned myself up and up
So that you would feel me

You went farther and farther
Away

Until my flames couldn't
Even touch your fingertips
Couldn't even kiss the back
Of your neck as
You look away from me
To planets that
I can't see

(Whose names trip
My tongue because
They are not my clan
Name)

In your absence
I burned harder,
White hot in the hurtcentre,
Orange tendrils reaching
Out to find you and,
Finding not you, to
Hold anyone they touch.

But my tendrils are
Still flames;
The harder I grasp
The more they burn

People are, maybe,
Initially attracted to the heat,
They step closer wanting
To warm their cheeks.
When they see how ready
I am to engulf them

(To burn them up
Because they
Are not you)

They step quickly
Back opting for
Less intense
More predictable less
Deadly heat.

I will take myself up to
The top of a mountain
With oxygen to feed my flames
And space to spit my hurt
And stars to dance with
Stars to stretch my flame fingers out
To
To hold

Stars that will not run away

Up to the seaweed sky

Up to the seaweed sky
(Thank you to Ruthieheart
And the Heyns family for seaweed in the sky)
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"Choose," he said, "Magic or safety?"
she smiled.
"I choose Sky" she said,
"and Strelitzias"

Sky fish (plum-coloured triggers, crimson-breasted clowns) and
sea birds (Picasso waxbills, teardrop-butterfly kites) in the starcloud
sea

 "Choose," he said, "Tomorrows or yesterdays?"
she twirled.
 "I choose Pink" she said,
"and circles"

Water trees (jacaranda necklace and fever kelp) and
 Cloud corals  (stag-horn cumulus and great-star cirrus) in the tidepulled
sky

"Choose," he said, "Hope or truth?"
She glowed.
"I choose Silence" she said,
"and openings"

Seabed flowers (pebble snowdrops and volcanic chrysanthemums) and
Precipitation molluscs (hail oysters and mist ammonites) in the moon-wrapped
sea

"Choose," he said "Forward or roots?"
She floated.
"I choose Up" She said
"And angels"

She floated Up
And

Up

Through the seaweed sky.