Brie Nicole Inked

I learned early
How to make a home
Out of smoke.

How to sleep with sirens in my bloodstream.
How to swallow grief whole
Without choking loud enough
For anyone to notice.

Everything around me burned eventually.
Hands.
Promises.
The fragile architecture of hope.
Even my name felt singed at the edges,
Dragged through years that bit down hard enough
To leave teeth marks in my spirit.

But fire is a strange thing.
It does not only destroy.
Sometimes it introduces you
To the part of yourself that cannot be buried.

Life arrived with its fists already clenched.
Circumstance wrapped barbed wire around my ribs
And called it survival.
I became a creature of clenched teeth.
Of shaking hands.
Of pretending the ache was not eating holes through me.

There were nights
I could feel the flames licking the inside of my lungs.
Nights I mistook exhaustion for surrender.
Nights I almost let the darkness convince me
That being consumed was easier than rebuilding.

But I am not kindling.
I am not the soft collapse they hoped for.

I crawled out of ruin blistered.
Half-animal.
Half-prayer.
Dragging what little remained of me
Through the wreckage with blood under my nails.

And still.
Still.
My heart continued its violent little beating.

That has to mean something.

So let the world strike the match again.
Let it call me difficult
For refusing to disappear.
Let the heat come.

I have already survived becoming ash.

Now when I burn,
I burn like rebirth.