Burning Alive
You weren't lightning not sudden not honest
You were the kind of fire that starts behind the walls
Quiet Patient Already too late by the time I smelled it
At first you were warmth
God, you were warmth
Hands on my chest breath in the cold rooms of me filling spaces I didn't know had gone numb
I leaned into you like something freezing like something that had never learned the difference between comfort and danger
You lit candles in my dark soft flickers harmless things
but I didn't see how quickly flame learns the shape of a home
It started small
A raised voice like a spark catching fabric A slammed door like oxygen rushing in That sentence "If you loved me…" gasoline poured gentle over everything I was trying to keep intact
And I stayed
Even when the smoke began to settle in my lungs even when breathing you in started to hurt
I told myself this is what love feels like heat pressure the constant threat of burning
I called it passion while the walls blackened
I called it complicated while the exits disappeared
You spread fast through every room of me curling into corners I thought were mine alone
You made a home out of my ruin before I realized I was the one being lived in
By the time I saw it clearly everything was already gone
Pictures of who I was curled into themselves faces I used to wear reduced to outlines and ash
The version o me that knew how to leave collapsed first
Funny how that works
I remember the moment I finally ran
not brave not heroic
just choking blinded instinct overriding love for the first time
You reached for me through the smoke voice cracking like burning beams telling me I was abandoning you that I started this that I owed you the flames
And part of me almost turned back
Because even then even with everything collapsing you still felt like warmth
That's the cruelest part
Fires don't hate you They don't choose you
They just take and take and take until there's nothing left that remembers what it was before
I got out If you can call it that
But I still smell you sometimes in quiet moments in the way I flinch at raised voices in how I check every room for exits in how I mistake calm for something temporary
They say house can be rebuilt
They don't talk as much about the way smoke lingers how it seeps into everything how even new walls remember the burn
You weren't love
You were a house fire I mistook for a place to live
And I'm still learning how to stop calling the damage home