Brie Nicole Inked

Anger arrives first like a struck match.

A flare. A hiss. A throat full of smoke.

It climbs my ribs with blood-warm hands, demanding somewhere to go, something to break, a name to carve into the walls of my chest. It is sharp-edged and restless. It rattles my bones like loose change in an empty pocket. Every memory becomes a splinter. Every wound becomes a mouth. I want answers. I want justice. I want to tear through the silence with my bare hands and drag every hidden hurt into the light.

But sadness is already there.

Curled beneath the fire.

Waiting.

And that is the cruelty of it.

The anger says, fight.

The sadness says, fall apart.

So I become a battlefield caught between a scream and a sob. My heart does not know whether to clench its fists or collapse to its knees. I feel fury burning through my veins while grief fills my lungs with water. One moment I am a wildfire swallowing everything in sight. The next I am drowning beneath the ashes.

I hate what happened.

I mourn what happened.

The two truths collide inside me like storms crashing headfirst into one another.

There are days when I mistake my sadness for weakness and my anger for strength. Then the feelings switch masks. The rage is only grief with its teeth bared. The sorrow is exhaustion from carrying flames for too long. Neither one leaves. They circle each other endlessly, feeding one another, becoming impossible to separate.

So I sit with both.

The shaking hands. The burning chest. The ache that settles deep inside the marrow.

I let the anger speak in its broken, jagged language. I let the sadness answer in tears that feel pulled from somewhere ancient. Together they split me open. Together they teach me that healing is not always gentle. Sometimes it is a heart being pulled in opposite directions, surviving the stretch. Sometimes it is fire and flood occupying the same body, refusing to cancel each other out.

And somehow, despite everything, I remain.

Scorched.

Drenched.

Still breathing through the wreckage.