Golden-Jagged Rays

I've been listening to a lot of Fiona Apple lately and finally gave some space to this years-old poem and collage combo.

I remember when you said 
that I have a sun inside me—
a light burning so brightly brilliant,
colossal in its warming 
radiance to all I touch.

But it’s dimmed, my sun,
dragged through the mud of my own choices,
smothered facedown,
ruin, 
madness,
such a damn shame.

And you said 
you’d never say you loved me.
That word, unimportant,
I hadn’t worked enough for it yet.
Hadn’t inspired love to slip past lips,
hadn’t spit-shined that sun of mine 
to gleaming mirrors admiring your face reflected.

How many years did I let smolder to coal?
Conjure meaning behind every gesture,
every ashen fleck affection,
when what I deserved was whole, 
bonfire passion that danced, 
licked flames just outside the stone ring 
against a tender, balmy darkness.

I finally saw the truth— that lack inside you.

I left you 
gaping, 
wanting 
as I snuffed out the last gasping ember
of your quivering lust for control.

I raze earth and build new,
blue-burning rage to cauterize the ways 
I was made to doubt.
Sunrise bursts through my chest
with the most gorgeously golden-jagged rays.

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