Phosphoric Fission

(Meant to die alone)

Too Bright to Hold

They named me light-bearer.
But light doesn’t care what it burns.
It just wants to be seen.

I don’t flicker. I flare.
I don’t warm. I scorch.
I touch people like detonations—
brief, devastating, unforgettable.

People love me in theory.
Hate me in practice.
Say I’m brilliant, luminous until I explode.
Say I’m deep until they drown in it.
I’ve been called addictive, compulsive,
beautiful,
toxic,
unforgettable,
dangerous.
And they’re all right.
I am all of it. At once.
I never asked to be loved.
I just wanted to be felt.

Until I burn people’s horizons
like napalm skies.

One flash to illuminate the sky, the next to destroy everything in sight.

I’m a selfish time bomb
that will explode with or without you—
waiting to burst
in the air of your expectations.
And it’s always louder
when I detonate myself.

I’m not nuclear fusion—
I’m nuclear fission turned human.

You think I push people away?
They taught me that closeness meant pain.
That “I love you” might mean “not for long.”
I learned early to sleep in armor.
Because the people who said they’d never leave—
left, bleeding through my memory like runoff.

I confuse survival with distance.
I confuse love with waiting for impact.

I've pushed away eleven people I could've grown old with.
Two still check in on my birthday.
The brother who stopped calling,
saying I wasn’t his brother anymore.

The guardians I don’t even talk to anymore.
The friend I made cry and never called back.
The best friend I froze out
for being too gentle with a storm like me.
Another left a scarf on my chair.
I sleep beside it like guilt with fringe.

They think I’m intense.
But it's not fire they're afraid of—
it's what they look like
when it reflects off me.

I am clingy.
Then cruel.
I pull people close
just to test how far they'll stretch before they break.
I pull people close
just to time how fast they run.

I was built like a chemical—
bond easily, break violently.
Every connection feels like combustion.
I either fuse or fragment.
I don't know how to just exist beside someone
without setting off a reaction.

I wasn’t meant to be a lasting element. I was meant to burn brightly and briefly.

Illuminate and burn.

I give life—
to neurons, to fields, to memory.
And then I take it.
With the same hands. The same voice.
I’m the reason you can recall your first heartbreak
in full color,
soundtrack and all.

I burn underwater like phosphorus.
Even drowning can’t put me out.
I was made to be an emergency.
You don’t date me.
You survive me.

People say I’m essential.
But essential doesn’t mean safe.
It just means if I leave,
something collapses.

They say they love me—
until they hate how much they do.
I am more intense
than a bomb rearranging your DNA structure.
They say I’m unforgettable—
then spend years trying to forget.

And I?
I remember every face.
Every name I bruised with my mouth.
Every I-love-you I turned into a warning label.

They hurt me too—
with silences that said more than screams,
with the way they vanished
when I needed someone to stay,
with the way they loved me
only when I made them feel clean.

I have PTSD dreams
where my voice won't work.
I wake up sweating,
apologizing to no one.
Anxiety wraps my chest in barbed wire.
Depression paints my walls
the color of retreat.
People say I’m dramatic—
but they've never watched a memory
jump out of nowhere
and drag them back
like a chokehold.

The sleep paralysis
that holds me
while I am exploding
with pain.

I carry pride like armor.
Because softness makes me flammable.
Because asking for love
has never ended clean.

Pride is my oxygen.
But regret?
Regret’s my inheritance.

So yes—
I will die alone.
But not unloved.
Just… loved from a distance.
Loved in past tense.
Loved with scars.

Loved through clenched teeth
and blocked numbers.

I am phosphorus.
Not a person.
A trigger.
A flare.
A funeral in progress.

I am the match.
The reason your sky turned orange.
The flash they mistook for warmth
until they smelled their skin.

No one survives me
twice.

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© 2025 Cass Delmare. All rights reserved.

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