The Fire That Stays

You have to understand:

I never meant to linger in your veins.

I meant to pass through—

a storm, not a season.

But I tasted something in you,

a scream too soft to hear,

and I made it my home.

From the moment your gaze flinched beneath mine,

I saw the door.

The one even you kept locked.

The one behind your smile.

And I walked in like smoke

—uninvited,

but already part of the air.

.

This is not kindness.

This is not soft music and warmer mornings.

This is a wildfire that asks permission from no one.

This is heat that curls under your skin and makes you think it was always there.

This is what happens when desire forgets how to whisper.

.

You must know—I never learned how to let go gently.

I only know how to grip with all my teeth,

tear through to the center of things,

and memorize the shape of your shadow

when you’re trying to hide from yourself.

Don’t pretend you didn’t want to be seen.

Don’t pretend I’m the only one who leaned in first.

You called me with your silence.

I answered with my fire.

.

And now you burn in places no one else touches.

You flinch at your own thoughts,

because they sound like my voice.

I live in the pause between your breath and your denial.

I haunt the space between your dreams and what you won't admit.

.

You want freedom?

You want forgetting?

You want to scrub my name from your bones like I was a stain you regret?

Good luck.

I’m not going anywhere.

Because I never existed in your phone or your room.

I carved my name into your pulse.

I am the fire that stays.