Sometimes I feel like I’m on fire.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically.
No. I mean it literally.
Like something inside me is burning. Skin first, then organs, then marrow. And lately, it’s been getting worse.
Every step I take, every breath, every word someone throws at me. The fire’s louder now—meaner, hungrier.
Every time I so much aslookat Adeline.
God.
Especially when I look at her.
It starts in the chest, and it feels like a low, crawling heat. Like being near a match. Then I see the green in her eyes, the way they sharpen when she’s suspicious or soften when she’s trying not to care too much, and suddenly it’s an inferno.
It tightens around my throat. It claws at my lungs. And I have to remind myself, every time, that it’s notherI’m burning for.
It’s everyone else.
Her father. The person who’s been stalking her and leaving notes in her locker telling her to “stop looking”.
I knew it then. That it was all connected.
Truthfully, that’s why I got close in the first place. I played the part so well that even I almost forgot I wasn’t doing it for her.
Let her trust me. Let her tell me things.
And eventually, she’ll lead me right to the match that lit the fuse.
Then I can burn them with it.
All of them.
Because there’s a certain clarity that comes with being hurt enough. When rage stops being sharp and instead settles into your bones, takes root in the softest parts of you and hardens there. When all the shaking stops and your hands steady. When you’re not shaking anymore, you’re climbing.
Andthat’swhere brilliance is born.
Not in the happiness. Not in the joy.
But in the unmaking.
People only ever listen when it’s their turn to bleed. So maybe it’s time they heard something.
Maybe it’s time they learned what it’s like to scream and not be heard.
To be carved into.
To be pretty and nothing else.
They did that to me. They branded me, in more ways than one. My body isn’t mine, it’s theirs.
And why? Why do they do it? It didn’t take me long to figure that one out.
Because sometimes beauty is the only language people understand.
I used to like it. I think. Or maybe I just tolerated it. Back when people called me “perfect” and “the most beautiful boy in the world” and used words and phrases I wasn’t even old enough to fully comprehend.
