Scorched earth love

You preferred

to make love slowly,

as if you were afraid

that any increased speed

would cause friction

that would spark the oxygen

we hadn’t yet used,

sending up

the room around us.

I preferred

the speed of passion

and impurity,

because with my

dying-from-the-inside-out,

scorched earth

approach to love,

I’d rather turn out the lights

just to watch us burn.

“Scorched earth love” won Honorable Mention in the 2017 Al Savard Memorial Poetry Contest of the Connecticut Poetry Society