The man who trained fire
to flit from his lips
fell in love with the woman
who sang
with water’s voice.

Songs flowed up her throat,
washing across the air between them
to slip through his ribs
as if they were stones in a brook.
She tried to quench
the fire that burned in his lungs,
but only succeeded
in setting herself to boil.

She pooled in a cottage she found
for them and begged him
to build his hearth there.  For her,
for love, he endeavored to do it, but
stillness smoldered in the soles of his feet.
He set out without a word,
charring the miles black behind him.

He left her steaming, but her anger
hardened to ice in his absence.
She watched over him through news
of the havoc he wrought like wildfire,
leaving third-degree scars in every life
his blazing hands touched
and legends wherever her wandered.

Upon his return her attempted to thaw her
with searing kisses and warm words.
She tried to freeze him out, encase her heart, but
even the largest glacier joins the sea
eventually.  The melted drops of her found their way
to his brilliant flame and turned down the burn until
they simmered together.