not back, just thought i should share this poem
she was like fire. history within every flame. the sun to early humans, survival for our ancestors. stories were told in her presence. passed through generations, she carried them on. they danced and laughed around her, felt safe within her close reach, and with the breath of the life surrounding her, she grew, and grew, and grew. she fed off the breath of laughter, the sigh of tears, her light expanded, and so did her warmth, but as she did so, she saw them shuffle away. little by little, she saw them drift away, so she grew, trying to reach them, to fill the empty space between, but her sparks were not meant to touch the things that gave her life. She grew, and their eyes widened, /come, and I’ll give you life, I’ll hear your stories, I’ll give you hope and warmth./ she whispered, but she saw them reach for the ice, cold water, and put her out. just like that. there are many ways to put a fire out. small, and all you have to do is smother it, take the life out of it. bigger, and you’ll need to drown it. but a wildfire, she speaks for herself, angered that she’ll only be remembered for being a disaster. /if i was so precious to you,/ she whispers, /why did you extinguish the light within me, the light that heard your stories, your laughter, your tears i was there to listen, but you never saw me for my beauty, never saw the “pretty” in me. i just wanted to be free, not held within the walls you made for me./ when we were children, our parents told us not to play with fire but we did it anyway, because we saw the beauty in fire, didn’t care about the smell it left on us, and felt proud of the scars it would give us, but even then, fire was always a “survival game”. — the history the flames see
