Hansel Starts a Fire

I didn’t follow her out of the forest.

Not at first.

I stayed behind, watching the flames chew the air where the witch had stood, where we’d stood, where everything we were supposed to forget was still burning.

Gretel didn’t look back.

She never does.

Her manifesto was already in her bones — rage turned into law, hunger into weapon.

She learned how to turn her terror into something sharp.

I learned how to make mine quiet.

We walked the same path home, but hers was lit by fire she could own.

Mine was lit by fire I had to hide.

They call us “survivors,” but that’s a polite word for people who learned how to breathe smoke.

She burned the witch.

I learned to keep the matchbook.

I didn’t write manifestos.

I didn’t raise my voice.

I learned to fold my words into small, harmless shapes.

To smile when asked.

To sleep with the taste of ash on my tongue and call it bread.

People think fire is loud.

It isn’t.

Not at first.

It starts like a secret —

a hiss, a whisper, a promise you’re not sure you’ll keep.

I kept it for years.

Kept it under the bed, in my chest, in my teeth.

Every time someone tried to pat my head, to tell me the worst was over, the flame pressed against my ribs, asking to be let out.

Gretel would say: Burn it all, let them choke on the smoke.

I can’t.

I burn pieces.

Corners.

Edges.

Things no one will miss — until they do.

The thing about the oven —

No one asks what it smells like when it’s empty.

No one asks what it’s like to dream about the sound of the door closing.

Gretel turned her back on it.

I took it with me.

And now…

Now I light things.

Small at first — paper, kindling, the corner of a fence.

I tell myself it’s just to feel warm, but warmth was never the point.

Control was.

Because when the fire’s in your hands, you get to choose what burns.

Sometimes I think about her.

About how her hands didn’t shake when she pushed.

About how she walked away before the screaming stopped.

I wonder if she thinks of me too — or if I’m just another ghost in the smoke she refuses to inhale.

We survived the same forest.

But she turned hers into a battlefield.

And I… I keep mine smoldering, one match at a time.

One day I’ll stop.

Or I’ll let it take me too.

I don’t know which will come first.

But I know this:

Fairy tales don’t end when you kill the monster.

They end when you stop seeing yourself in the smoke.

And I’m not there yet.