Igniting

Today she is part and not whole, lost
to the pieces that are no longer pieces of her.
She believes the world in grays and blacks, choking
on all the days that made her nothing but smoke.

This tiny revolution lives inside her brain
and makes her too much and too little
for all the right people. Both she and it are campfires,
constantly caught between burning and burning out.

This conflict is nameless.
When it simmers to nothing she cries for its symptoms
like their autonomy might cling to her cage
and save her from herself; This is Igniting.

Perhaps her days are paradoxes,
where burning is burning out and surviving is dying.
Isn’t all surviving just dying in disguise?

She’d rather die than survive, because
burning takes parts of her and reduces them to ash;

She is more than that. She wants to be more than
just the aftermath of a chemical reaction.