My Prometheus

Beneath the soup that pours over the earth, a darkness fit with sparkling studded sliced carrots,
I am chained to my liver, and my liver chained to me.
A peacock comes to warn me, and nuzzles his head beneath my ribcage, and falls asleep with his feathers over my eyes, oh! I am grateful.
But the hot soup comes in thick brown sludge, and cares little for my liver or life, and instead prefers the skin on my arms and legs.
Sizzles of meat--that’s me--make me wish I had never come here at all,
Where this rock was once soft, a pillow of lava cooling too quickly to its obsidian shine,
Beautiful heat, not quite an intrusion of crystals on my body when layered with soup-sludge but still a burn nonetheless,

Fire does not easily forgive,
My Prometheus remains.