you have a forest fire tip-toeing inside you
flames singeing your fingertips
a matchbox for a tongue.
summer girl, they coo
sweet summer girl
born on the cusp of june
a blooming, cloudless day.
you should be something easily loved.
swaying swamp grass
blackberry jam basking in filtered sunlight
tumbling seawater
there are so many empty spaces you are expected to fill.

but you are the sudden drought that leaves their hands empty and wanting
the bonfire that slips out of control
the faulty fuse.
you
are
destruction
sweeping through their land
tearing out their roots
sweeping away their weeds.
the world is a dry brittle place
and you are hungry after a lifetime of being told that you have no right to be.
nothing will survive you.

oh sweet girl
did no one think to tell you that
the strongest trees grow from ashes?

hyacinthus is okay because:

when he smiled the world lit up and his eyes were always
golden, like happiness. and his hands were warm and he
laughed like a song, and in the field
they could pick the sunniest flowers and kiss and kiss until
he lost his head.

(he held that disc in his hands for a long time, after. the wind
touseled his hair and laughed at him, and he wanted to scream.)

cyparissus is okay because:

his hair always glittered in the goldlight and his mouth curved
just like his bow, it was so endearing, and yet he towered and shone and shone
like the god he was. he breathed words shaped from light itself. he
always knew what to say, with music notes dancing from his lips, with
prose, spilling from his smile; always what to say, all up until
he didn’t.
and he wasted away.

(he sees stags in the woods sometimes that could have blossoms wrapped ‘round the antlers,
but they never do. he wishes they did.)

icarus is okay because:

it was every touch and word and promise that always kept him dreaming, and
he saw sunlight in his teeth. he was all golds and yellows and he felt like a fire when they touched.
he had been drowning anyway, with him,
but then, it had been something else that filled his lungs, and
splashed his skin, instead of
ocean and wax.

(and for a while afterwards, he stared up at birds and thought about how they never worry about falling, either. the divine healer felt sick.)

and apollo is okay because:

he isn’t. he collects lovers like tombstones and hopes that the next will,
at least,
die in peace.
guilt is unbecoming of a god.