The stubborn flame

It only takes a little for me to burst into flames. This ardor surprises me as it erupts like an impatient volcano. All it takes is a pinch of desire, an impossible image, and I find myself trembling as I did at first love. How uncontrollable I was then! A small thing would set off the wrong valves. I would lose the fluids of my consciousness like a full bladder.

I used to think that I had matured, being old enough not to have these jolts. The seasons have passed their rake. My aspirations have been pruned time and again. My voice, loud and uncontrolled, has long been content with a spring of straw. Saturn, as with all of us, took thirty, sixty years to rule the gardens. My teacher picked me up somewhat extinct, tries to revive the river of my tremolos ever since.

All it takes is a bit of pepper, a spicy word, the tectonic creaking of my heart, for the body to become intoxicated suddenly, the mind so drunk that its breath is sharp, its stomach in knots. The flame, the dangerous and joyful one, still manages to smoke even in the deep waters. I could give my soul back to a little devil who would undoubtedly eat my poor flesh. The fire, the blood that hits the skin of my eardrums, the ear of my ideas, everything is an excuse for pyrotechnics, for the danger of a powder keg.

It will probably end up exhausting and killing me. What does it matter how long the meal and the pleasure last, since giving up life will be my last desire and blasphemy, my last tune that I will sing, inebriated by some morphine.