Heuristic

Out of the Frying Pan. Out of the fire.

Out of the Frying Pan. Out of the fire.

(A/N Formatting weird converting it to Wattpad.)

I first smelt the flames in my grandfather's mansion. Eastside Road.

Smelt, then felt them in the drug-money-built prejudice. Internalized.

Four wives, and white guilt, and that he'd never been a good father.

Never done more than fanned fallow and quicklime. So as to catch.

More than scent, sulfur ignites the kindling cycle.

Ignites a belief that family are just people.

They harbor their hate all-same, and so, I do not think about it again.

I do my damnedest to be little more than unseen. I forget, eventually.

Then the fire caught up again in the first true kindness.

In the lacking. In people who are just so fucking interesting.

And at least half of them are terrible. But some are lovely.

Lovely in how they talk and breath carcinogen fuel easily.

I learn, then, that there's more. That the fire is widespread.

Widespread and a part of nature, not biblical recompense.

That I am among many, and that fire can heal and renew, wait—

Wait... even in the safety there is the purging. The charring of hope.

Stopping myself from listening, but not being able to.

With the healing there are burns, but oh how sweet.

Oh how wonderful to not fear the flame like the winged angels above it.

Above their pittances, and trying to see the ground, to see and to listen.

Oh, burnt gods, listen to them sing. Listen to them cry.

Like the searing call of orphaned newborns, all-abandon.

Fire and brimstone churned up and reeling, through the earth.

Through the turmoil and char, there is intrepid freedom, bleak.

Its the wavebirds, see. Like me, wanting to roost.

Wanting unburdened and unjudged to be as they are.

Build a nest wherever and however I choose. Away from flame.

Away from sulfur and the pungent toppling on Eastside Road.