Light Eater

You only loved me for my light.
It dazzled you for, I don’t know how long.
It mesmerized you how I shone
Filled with a glow that only 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.
Breath by breath I stoked life.
Word for word I inflammed passion.
My heart burned again and again for another
Till I was a white hot furnace of searing grace.
Whatever I gave out came back double and triple.
So my sparkle accumulated unnoticed
Till I blazed like the brightest star that you'd want to pluck
right out of the velvet midnight sky.

And it drew you out of your glooming.
You edged unseen into the wide arc of my radiance.
Your darkness fled when you touched me
and all at once our two worlds collided,
exploding into a kaleidoscope of wildest jungle hues,
so bright it blinded us.
It spun me round and round till I had no sense
of what was front and what was back,
what was top and what was bottom.
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 mad 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, realising that something was missing.
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.

Now I sit, dull witted and ashen souled.
I feel so cold.
With my last ounce of will I egg my heart on to flicker,
But it only spluttered once, like a broken down car.
The fuses refuse to spark, elect not to connect.
And the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise
as a chill, wet darkness
steals up from behind me, creeps up my limbs
until it settles into the pit of my stomach,
It sits down heavily with a thump, intending to stay.

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