Diamond & Burn

The beginning is always the same — not a moment, but a fracture of light on something I mistook for myself.

Beneath a navy sky, I made a vow. I called it love. I called it forward. I was already running.

I carried light the way deserts carry heat — not as warmth, but as proof that I was still moving, that movement was enough.

I searched for a diamond flower with burning winds at my back and named the searching living, and named the living for you — because it was easier than admitting I was lost long before you had a name.

Then you came. Not as another light. As the test of everything I believed was luminous.

The shattered memories spilled — I cut through a deep crimson shadow. Even as my nails cracked, I kept grasping, kept insisting this is protection, this is the blade I took up for love —

but a blade that only justifies the act of continuing is not a weapon. It is an excuse with an edge.

Now I stand between two lights: one that claims to be me, one that strips me of the claim.

On nights when I think of you and cry, something blooms — more fragile than I wanted it to be, stronger than I had any right to make it.

A diamond flower. Which is to say: something only pressure makes. Which is to say: something that costs whoever holds it first.

Was I protecting something? Or was I fleeing darkness and calling the flight devotion?

Let it resound — this heart, this burning, this vow made beneath a sky that never asked if I deserved the light.

I thought I carried light. I was only carrying what would learn how to burn me.