Ode to the Fire Inside

Beloved furnace.
Beautiful tyrant.
Crown of impossible weather.

I have carried your name
like a coal under the tongue.

I have praised the scorch
because it proved I was close enough
to something powerful
to be damaged by it.

Isn’t that what longing teaches first?
To kneel beside the wound
and call the wound an altar?

I loved the way you made me visible.
My face lit from the inside.
My shadow sharp behind me.
My whole body
a struck match refusing to confess
it was becoming ash.

I said yes
because yes sounded like sunlight.

I said stay
because stay sounded like prayer.

You gave me brightness
with no place to rest from it.
You gave me heat
and called my thirst devotion.

Still, listen,
some part of me remains grateful.

Not for the burn.
Never for the burn.

But for the day I finally understood
that worship can become weather,
and weather does not love
the house it enters.

Beloved furnace,
I return your flame.

I keep the scar
as evidence
that I once mistook destruction
for being chosen.