Heart of a Tempest

Insatiable. Unloved.

I was not lit. I ignited, a spark buried deep, shaking off centuries of silence, starving for meaning.

I do not burn for vengeance. I burn for understanding.

For the truths long buried beneath shambles and limestone.

For the pages that curled to ashes in the Library of Alexandria.

For the candlelit secrets of Halloweens long passed, when the veil was thinner and phantoms dared to speak plainly.

I devour what I do not yet know.

I consume ruins and cities alike, not out of hatred, but in hopes that somewhere beneath the rubble I might find the thing I was made to find.

Love. The true kind. The eternal kind. The kind that doesn't flinch when the fire draws near.

But I have never known it.

Not once.

The world trembles at the sight of me.

They flee. They beg the rain to come.

And still I burn.

The forests collapse before me, the skies blacken, but it is not enough. It never is.

I want everything. Every book. Every name.

Every shadowed truth and forbidden myth.

I will tear open the heavens if I must.

Until then, let the world turn to ash.

Let the stars dim and the oceans boil,

Until then, let the jack-o’-lanterns melt into their own grins,

Let the wind carry the scent of my passage like an old warning,

Let the night taste of smoke and memory.

I am fire,

and I will never stop.

I will keep burning.

Until I find him, until-

He steps inside the inferno and closes the door.