Then let it be known—
this was never about the spark.

Fire is easy.
It’s the aftermath
that asks something of you.
The way heat rewrites the body,
teaches bone how to hold memory
without splintering.

I have felt myself catch—
not all at once,
but in quiet, deliberate takes:
a heart,
the hollow behind the ribs,
the softest parts first.

Not destruction.
Refinement.

There are things in me now,
that will not survive this temperature—
old names,
closed doors,
the habit of shrinking
to fit inside someone else’s storm.

Listen —
there is a sound to it.
Not screaming.
Not ruin.
A low, steady consumption.
Like something sacred
finally being taken seriously.

I do not reach for water anymore.
I let it have me
in the places I used to abandon.

And what remains
is not ash.
It is structure.
It is edge.
It is a body
that knows exactly
how much heat it can carry
without asking permission
to exist.