Ignite

I wanted to devour her.
She was warm to the touch, to the point of fever
and it gave her skin a deep, ruddy blush
like the skin of an apple.
There were traces of heat everywhere -
the trail of my fingers to her hips,
the fragility of her ribs,
the delicate hollow of her throat.

It was too much, so I ignited her.
I gripped her in all the gentle places,
held her fast with my teeth and my arms.
She became flooded with fire.
The heat was enough to kill me, to make me dizzy
as though her body contained in itself a furnace,
or the sun.

There were glorious crests of it, founts, red,
then, embers.
They kept me warm for the rest of the night.