Keep Your Spine Unbroken

When one grows up in a burning house, they will try to tell you the world is on fire. But how could you blame them? 

They learn to breathe smoke before they do air, drift asleep the crackle of flames as lullaby, call the searing heat against their skin a loving embrace.

Their walls whisper charcoal and dust, teaching that the world does not hold them, but would clench their throat harder with every breath they inhale. They do not know of the cool touch of rain or the soft blow of a breeze that does not sting the cracks in their skin. Even the pale glow of the moon feels like a distant echo of the fire that raised them, an eternal reminder that nothing in their world have ever truly been safe. 

“The fire’s gone,” they would say.  But how could they explain that the ashes still linger in veins and blood?

And when they finally climb past the charred remains of that house, they search the sunrise for flames, foraging for signs of The End they are convinced is coming. A crack of thunder becomes warning, and even the sun, warm and golden, feels a little too close, a little too familiar, as it carries the same heat that shaped their first gasp. 

They will try to tell you the world is ablaze, as their youth calls out longingly. 

Yet the fire follows them, embedding itself deep within their chest, where it lingers and waits, digging into their voice and turning words into sparks, lullabies into alarms, and love into something that ignites with the lightest touch.

Generations pass; dry wood catching flame, each trying to escape the heat with trembling hands, only to discover that the fuel is already inside them, coursing through their every memory. My mother wore the fire like a shawl, wrapping us in her poetic wisdom, voice crackling with the warnings that never left her tongue. 

How can they learn to rebuild when their foundation is scorched into ashes? But what would they know about waters that can ripple without boiling, or a sun that shines without devouring?

When one grows up in a house ignited into flames, they do not learn to trust the quiet or believe that the world can carry them without pain; instead, they backpack the fire in their shadow, always watching for it to spark, always wondering if the heat inside their chest their wrongdoing or their savior. 

But how could you run away from something that’s so beautiful? Something that resembles the dimples when you smile, the butterfly bones that boost your arms like wings, and those brown eyes so deep one could get lost in the vast universe of stories they hold; a labyrinth where beauty and despair walk maybe just out of reach, but impossible to ignore.