Firestorm--10/26

Again with the Shakespeare project. This one is about the airy spirit Ariel from The Tempest.

Firestorm

In the end, I am only air.
You swallow me without thinking about it.
You letme deliver myself to your blood.
I am your grandmother's letter opener.
I am your grandfather's toothpick.
I am the desert you let strech through your fingertips.

I had nothing to do wtih you family tree.
I didn't draw the lines or paint their portraits.
(Some speculate
if I have hands at all.)
But I made you.
You can call me "god" if you want, you can call me
you ship-wrecking guardian angel. You can put me on a chain
if you want.
You can tell me to tear off entire ships
like pages from a notebook made to be burned.
You can tell me to rip your name into their sails.
Leaving it clean at the end like a surgeon performing on your addled organs.
Your yellow pancreas, resting on your stomach like your sleeping daughter.
The shipwreck of lymph nodes lodged in your neck and groin.
Your red, red heart.

Before the fire goes out, I have heard them whisper, I have heard them wonder
if they even existed at all.
Be it in the duke's fireplace with the pearl-eating duchess out-cold on the fainting couch.
Be it the forest fire painting the sycamores black.
Be in the end of a sailor's cigarette between bleeding gums.