As the dust is dampened
captured by the dew.
As the birch and sweet grass burns
along with you-
I will spit into the flame.
I'll never be the same.
And I will not leave the fire
until its through.



"With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame."
George Eliot
Middlemarch