Light Eater

You only loved me for my light.
It dazzled you for, I don’t know how long.
You were mesmerized by how I shone,
how I was filled with a glow
that only selfless love could ignite.
It made you, who sat in the shadows, hungry.

I didn’t even know I had it.
Didn’t see how each day I built it up,
watt by watt, through the little loving things I did.
It had become second nature to me
to stoke life with my breath,
inflame passion with my words;
my heart burned only for another.
I became a white hot furnace of searing grace.
So my sparkle accumulated unnoticed
till I blazed like the brightest star that you'd want to pluck,
right out of a velvet midnight sky.

And it drew you out of your gloaming:
You edged unseen into the wide arc of my radiance.
Your darkness had to flee when you touched me
as all at once our two worlds collided,
exploding into a kaleidoscope of wildest jungle hues,
a conflagration so bright it blinded us.
Like a spinning top I was whirled madly round
till I had no sense of what was front or back, up or down.

My feet must have left the ground at some point
because suddenly I landed in the dust
and a fine layer of white soot descended and doused me.
Still reeling in the afterglow of that wild encounter
I was breathless with laughter as of a child’s, from the belly,
and sounded like the sweetest bell,
the kind that chimes when angels get their wings.

But as the last of the seagreen aquas, lollipop yellows
and electric blues faded back into their normal neutral hum,
I fell silent, my still pumping heart registering
a sudden, unfamiliar sensation of loss,
a taste of blood down the back of my throat.
I peered to see what had changed.
My shine had gone.
My spark.
My flare.
In that blistering dance when I loved with my brightest love
You ate up all my light.
You thief of darkness devoured every last drop of my brilliance.
In one fat gulp you swallowed up all my dazzle.
Then you dribbled away into the twilight, leaving no trace.

I realize with a start, that I was sitting in the shadows.
And I was starving.