star fated.

alicia keys once sang "this girl is on fire." i am that girl...that is me.

I curse the stars that aligned the day I emerged on a continuous howl. My voice was raw, my hands fisted in visceral rage.

The few birds dusted snow off sycamore branches. The flakes fell like nimble dancers. 

A sagittarius is what I am, the archer of the zodiac.

With my bow string pulled back -so tense it might snap- I erupt in a blaze.

a flickering candle flame in a frost-bitten window,

the bated breath of a long-sleeping dragon,

a raging wildfire hazing everything in its path,

a girl tripping over her star-tainted fate.

On my death bed, burnt and rusted, canines rotted by something caustic and vile, will I mimic the victims of Pompeii?

A charred shell of a being?

I want a new narrative.

A water sign? An air sign?

Put me on the Oregon coast. Drown me in waves the same salt as my tears. Let me slip from time like trickling water.

Let me fly away like a kite with nothing grounding me. The clouds could swallow me whole.

I wish that on my death bed, as I take my dying breath, thunder will roll over hills and cleave open the earth.

On that final gasp for air, I will spontaneously combust, only to emerge into an elysian paradise.

I wish my horoscope was a posthumous thing.