Blast Furnace Heart

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Ungainly and ugly,
white-hot on the inside.
Over time it
destroys itself with love

and incinerates
what it touches.

It melts the decades
into lava and pours it
into huge crucibles.
Its memory is long,

but it sees only
fire, only smoke.

At last its structure
implodes, clanging heavily
into dark. But a red coal
lives on, recalling

all the burning,
and everyone that

cindered while near it.
What’s left of the heat
mourns, what’s left of the
heart passes into cold.