The Inheritance of Fire

I was raised in the storm’s mouth, where walls learned to shudder before I did. Nights smelled of whiskey and rage, and the air, thick with silence, was a hymn of waiting— waiting for the door to slam, for the curse to carve its way into the night. My mother, a quiet soldier of suffering, wore her silence like armor, her eyes pleading with God in the language of the unheard. My sister, a bird with broken wings, folded herself into corners too small for sorrow. And I— I memorized the rhythm of his rage, the way it arrived like clockwork, the way it turned our home into a battlefield without a war, without a reason. I swore to be different. Swore I would build my hands into a refuge, not a wreckage. Swore my voice would never carry thunder into rooms that only asked for quiet. But now, I see it— the way my fists clench at ghosts, the way my voice rises without permission, the way I become the very storm I once hid from. I drink, and I tell myself, just one more. I yell, and I tell myself, it was nothing. I watch their faces flinch, and I tell myself, I didn’t mean it. But what is the difference between a man who destroys and a man who never meant to? I am becoming the thing I spent my whole life running from, a ghost wearing my father’s face. And I wonder— is blood stronger than will? Is pain something we pass down like a name? Or can I carve him out of me, tear his shadow from my skin, and learn how to be a man without burning everything I love? Tell me— is there a way back? Or is a man doomed to become the echo of his father, no matter how much he swears he won’t? Tell me, Father— did you fight this war too? Did you lose? And am I doomed to do the same?