The Pleasure & The Pain

And for a brief moment he touched my soul, lighting a fire I had thought dead forever, breathing life into it until it became an inferno, engulfing me whole and flinging me high into the sky, brilliant and golden, ecstatic, joyous.

Now I sit in the ashes left behind, shivering in my new raw skin, no longer protected by the hard shell my life had built around me, wondering how I will survive without it.