image from topmita.com
poem submitted to "Black Cat Moan by Glenn Huges" poetry contest, Robert James Liguori, sponsor 7/3/2026
I walked into a fire that wasn’t made of flame, a blaze of doubt and longing that called me by my name. It rose from buried questions, from truths I tried to hide, from all the dreams I’d quieted to keep the peace inside. Its heat was forged of choices, of paths I didn’t take, of moments when my courage fell silent for my sake. The sparks were old assumptions, the smoke was worn-out fear, and every crackling ember said, You’re meant to stand right here. I felt it burn around me, yet nothing turned to ash; instead the fire revealed me in one bright, searing flash. It stripped away the shadows, the stories I outgrew, and left me with a fierceness I never knew I knew. For metaphorical fire does not arrive to break~ it comes to heal, to melt the boundaries we never meant to make. And when its heat has softened the walls we built in vain, with faith we step out of the furnace more whole than we remain.
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