Word Weapons

A slow burn at first, a simmering resentment in the gut, like a banked fire refusing to be extinguished. A whisper of injustice, a flicker of wrong. Then the fanning of the flames, each recounted slight, each observed inequity, fueling the heat. The whisper escalates to a roar within. The world sharpens, edges defined by the perceived offense. Empathy shrinks, replaced by a laser focus on the source of the inferno. Sleep offers no escape, dreams are battlegrounds. Words become weapons, honed and ready. Nuance dissolves in the consuming heat. The desire to strike, to correct, to obliterate the perceived wrongness, pulses like a fever. This fire, fueled by conviction, believes itself pure, a cleansing force. It sees only black and white, right and wrong, oblivious to the shades of gray that blur the edges. But the intensity consumes. It burns bridges, scorches empathy, leaves behind a landscape of ash and isolation. The righteous heart, in its fervent defense of what it deems true, risks becoming indistinguishable from the very injustice it seeks to destroy. The question lingers in the suffocating heat: can this burning serve a purpose beyond destruction? Can it be channeled, tempered, transformed from a wildfire into a controlled flame that forges true and lasting change, without consuming the very soul that ignited it? ©bfa051125