Chapter 1: “Don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”

“Don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”

 

Words I’d love to live by

If this weren’t my only home.

Is it a blessing or a curse

That ash has yet to become of my bone?

I ask myself a lot of questions

Simply because my father’s teachings weren’t in knowledge,

Rather he was a fine teacher in fear and silence,

A curriculum of slapped mouths 

And unnecessary violence.

I remember tearing apart

The crust from a tuna sandwich

And balling it up to throw it away

But he, sitting alone at the TV

Saw me–sitting alone at the ball

He kept me chained there until I ate it

The crusted edges of something already consumed–

I sat there, frozen, for over an hour, until I swallowed the ball

Gagging, disgusted– yet free, with the lesson of “finishing my plate.”

I remember sitting around the corner of the hallway

As he argued with my mother. Over and over

Yet they didn’t divorce for years.

I don’t know if dysfunction is nature or nurture

But I can’t seem to ever escape it

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Or my own fears. 

I remember running in the streets of my hometown at night

Because being gone was easier than being set alight

Easier than living a lie– right?

I always tell myself that my life isn’t so bad

Plenty have it worse, in comparison mine is pretty rad

But still, I wonder if suffering is supposed to be a necessary evil,

Or if it is manufactured by people like my father, and sometimes my mother

Or even my sister, whom I thought we shared a bridge that was stable.

But that too burned down, like the crust burned in my stomach acid–

Because to build a stable bridge on an unstable foundation

Both souls must hold an equal flame. 

My family’s burned out long ago, their hearts cracked jade–

They tried to burn mine out too, once,

But still…

The bridges are burning down, come what may. 

Because once I set myself alight, even without kindling

I can’t stop burning bright, like magnesium sparks water just

makes the flame burn hotter and hotter

Forever still will I burn, and burn, and burn? 

Be it a curse or blessing to live this way…

–My heart forever burns with a hopeful blaze.

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