When You Know Only One Thing

we met when we were seven years old, and you showed me how you can set ants on fire with your sister's lighter. i knew it wasn't right, but seeing the thrill in your eyes in the form of sparkles floating along a raging river kept me silent. and you loved silence. one night, you got a little too close to a tree with your flame—and it lit up like fireworks on Christmas; it was in the right place at the wrong time… the brightest among the stars, but consuming life and spitting out death… the artificial crucifix-shape shot out wrong and incorrectly displayed. you told me it was an accident. i knew it wasn't an accident. it raged fiercely, mimicking the sparks in your eyes, which i had mistaken for sparkles. there was no river in you that held water to heal others—there was only one which swallowed up land life and turned them all into floating, lost, empty bodies. and one day they'll all fall off the edge, along with your waterfall. then there will be a drought. it will be caused by the fire you set to the world that consumed all of the oxygen and therefore consumed everything. the only thing left will be the sun, glaring down at you, beating. beating like your heart in your chest when you realize you are the last living creature remaining and you will be executed in the face of the God your victims knew, but the one you had left up in the sky to watch your actions as you pretended you were a ghost. He can see ghosts. you never had any morals except for this one: what is dead cannot speak. but there you are, at the gates of hell, gasping and trying to find your voice. you are screaming, but no one can hear you. you were right. 

—when you know only one thing, it becomes your fate.

Copyright © Ashlea Senft | Year Posted 2017

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