I burned my hand again.

I got distracted and held my palm under the open flame too long, and it charred. I flicked off the lighter but didn’t flinch, staring in fascination at the darkness on my otherwise light skin.

I imagined my body the color of ash, hair the red-gold of a dancing flame. Perhaps with it I’d gain heat resistance and find a way to submerge myself in a furnace's depths.

I want to be burned alive.

I want to walk into a road and dare a car to hit me.

I want to climb to the top of the football stadium and tight-walk across a ledge six stories high.

One night, I want to walk alone through the city's worst neighborhood, shouting praise music at the top of my lungs.

I want to get knifed in a gun fight.

I want to glide down a staircase while reading.

I want to drive off the side of a bridge, if only to exalt in that moment of levitation between solidity and sinking.

I want to die laughing. 

I want to wade into a star going supernova and marvel at the universe’s majesty in my final moments.

I want to choose my death.

I don’t want to die young in a hospital bed, waning away for some three years from steepening sickness and manifesting mania. I don’t want to die a coward scared of death, holding onto moments, gasping for another word.

I want it to be wordless.

But for now, I only have a lighter and blackened flesh, words on my lips and ink on my fingertips. And until then, I’ll go on tempting fate, finding the days between my chosen death and eventual one.