Usually fire is unfamiliar to me. Usually
I am not its friend.
Whenever I forget I remind myself of the time
I tried to pull the fire close
and it bit me in the throat.

I have heard that volcanoes are probably gods,
their mouths actually; if this is true I would like to offer myself
as a sacrifice.
It is very hard, these days, to find a good martyr. Lately I have
become my own.
This is why I think of love as a sort of sacrifice:
I am so willing to die for the people I love,
I’ve almost begun to believe it’s necessary.

For this reason you shouldn’t ask me to do so,
unless you mean it.

(I understand throwing yourself to the wolves in place of someone else,
because I have been a wolf.
I understand blood.)

This means there is fire in our mouths. It means we are gods,
dirty and earth-shaken; here, a skull bleached by sun, having belonged
to a creature with two heads, one of which ate the other.
This must also be a sort of sacrifice –
I would let myself be eaten if it would keep the rest of me alive.