How To House the Fire

First, clear a space in the center of your chest.

Do not mistake this for a vacuum;

It is an altar built from the grit of desert sand

And the salt of a thousand unrecorded tears.

To feel this rage, you must first stop looking away.

Go to the border of your own comfort and stand there

Until the wire begins to hum in your own marrow.

Gather the ingredients of the indignation:

The cold metal of a cage door,

The silence of a child who has forgotten their own name,

The red clay soaked in what should have stayed inside the vein.

Do not swallow these things whole.

If you do, they will turn to ash and leave you hollow.

Instead, hold them in the light of the midday sun

Until they begin to glow with a terrifying heat.

To sustain the sacred rage, you must breathe

in a specific rhythm:

One sharp inhale for the injustice witnessed,

One long, slow exhale for the endurance required.

This is not a fever to be broken;

It is a furnace to be fed.

If the fire begins to dim into mere sadness,

Re-read the manifests. Count the shoes left in the brush.

Let the names of the lost be the kindling

That prevents the embers from turning to gray compliance.

Do not seek to move on or find peace.

Peace, in the face of the innocent shed,

is often just a polite word for forgetting.

Instead, wear the rage like a garment of woven nettles.

It will sting, yes, but it will keep you awake

while the rest of the world is lulled to sleep

by the drone of bureaucracy and distant sirens.

Finally, do not keep this fire in a jar.

Walk with it into the streets.

Let the heat of your righteous anger

warm the hands of those who have been shivering in the shadows.

When the rage is sacred, it does not destroy the builder,

It only burns away the fences.