"Emberkind: A Becoming"

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I used to chase storms

like they were answers

to questions I never knew how to ask.

I stood beneath bruised skies

and dared them to break open,

thinking maybe, if I stood still enough,

I’d learn what it meant

to be powerful

without apology.

I imagined myself lightning-borne—

a strike of will across the heavens.

Laced with fury,

wired with purpose,

a creature of thunder

wrapped in wind.

I wasn’t afraid to fall—

only afraid of being quiet,

of never mattering enough

to make something shake.

There was a time I wanted

to be seen

like a catastrophe—

gorgeous,

uncontainable,

an awe you couldn’t look away from.

But now I know

I am not the storm.

I am the silence

that lives at its center.

I am the breath

the sky holds

before it lets go.

I am not fury,

not anymore—

I am grace learned slowly,

earned across years

of breaking gently.

I used to yearn

to be the blaze—

a fire so bright

it turned the darkness into memory.

I thought to be alive

meant to burn

without boundaries,

to leave a trail of light

wherever I passed.

And I did burn.

Oh, how I burned.

For dreams too big

and belonging too far.

For voices that never called back,

for homes I only built in my head.

But flames consume

what they touch.

I learned that the hard way.

Now,

I understand I am not the fire’s crown.

I am not meant

to devour every shadow.

I am the ember—

slow,

deep,

steady.

I do not blaze—

I breathe heat

like a secret

held in the chest

of an ancient tree

through the longest night.

I carry light

in a quieter way—

a whisper,

a flicker,

a glow that doesn’t blind

but still says,

"I’m here."

I am the one

who waits

beneath the ashes,

not for rescue,

but for remembering.

I have built wings

not of gold,

but of soot and memory.

I have shaped feathers

from regrets,

stitched with the thread of time,

woven with both grief

and grit.

I once believed

that to matter

I had to be the phoenix—

to rise in flames,

glorious and unrecognizable

from the ruin.

But now I know—

I am not the phoenix.

I am the architect

of her rising.

I am the hands

that gather the ash.

The patience

that molds sorrow

into something

that might one day soar.

I have never been the anthem

they wrote for revolutions.

I am not the trumpet

that calls armies to their feet.

I am the low hum

that stays

when all the banners fall.

I am the melody

that mothers hum to themselves

on nights when the world forgets

their names.

I am not the victory march—

but I am the echo

that remembers

why we walk at all.

Once,

I saw the world in halves—

bright or broken,

hero or hushed.

I thought to be one

meant I could not be the other.

But life,

it seems,

is both.

I am fragments.

Yes.

But I am also the rhythm

between those fragments.

I am the pause

where healing begins.

I used to want to be

the masterpiece.

Hung on walls,

gazed at,

known.

But I know now

I am the artist—

paint-stained,

messy,

and alive

in the act of creating.

I am not the finished frame—

I am the brushstroke

still searching for its place.

I am not the sun—

I no longer long for that crown.

I am the ink

that writes the poetry

between its rise and fall.

I am the soft pen

that shapes starlight

into syllables.

I am not the sword.

I am the forge.

Not the flight—

but the root.

Not the wings,

but the earth

that teaches them

what it means

to leave.

I am not brilliance

as the world defines it.

But I carry

a quiet kind

of shine.

You might not notice me

from afar.

You might pass me by

without knowing

the worlds I carry

just beneath the skin.

But when the fire dies down,

when the world sleeps,

when the loud ones have left the stage—

I will still be here.

Breathing.

Glowing.

Becoming.

I once begged to be the sun.

But now, I know—

I am the spark that survives the night.

I am the breath that fans the coals.

I am the hand that builds warmth in silence.

I am the ember—

not bright, but eternal.

And yes—

I rise.

Not in flames,

not in gold,

but in the quiet strength

of someone

who has learned

how to love the dark

and still carry the dawn.

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