Cleo can feel it bubbling, this terrifying furnace underneath her skin, popping and frothing, it simmers and threatens.
She knows she'll be leaving in a blaze of glory, an explosion, a climax of fire and drums and screams. She thinks, I am outside of this world, I am outside of you all, one day I will be flying free.

Cleo chews the inside of her lip, and thrusts out her chest and worries her teeth with her tongue. Cleo doesn't know when to speak, or what to say, she forgets what you're meant to do.

She thinks about her father and desires him too much, and dreams about his hands, and wants to touch his face. She thinks about her boy and his suffocating kindness, she thinks about her mother and how she seems so diluted and so weak.

They say she's ill, her mother, they told her that she's not well at all.
Cleo hears but doesn't really listen, and she knows its bad but doesn't feel the pain.
If everyone you love dies, or leaves, or disappears, who do you become? Cleo validates herself through other people, other human beings proving her existance. When there's no one left then she can only fade away, or burn up like a phoenix.

She always chooses fire.