Fighting Fire

You are born of blue skies

and cool breezes.

You rise from the earth 

that one day you will return to.

You wait, watch, grow,

but eventually you learn

you must forge your own path.

You feel the need to 

capture your own place in the world,

finding the easiest way 

is to spread as wildfire,

blackening everyone who stands in your way.

As you began to venture out,

other flames quickly engulfed you,

swallowed you whole and spit out what was left,

what was charred and brittle.

But you built yourself back up

and moved on.

Packed up and left for good.

The once ever-burning fires that existed to scorch you,

that woke you and took hold over your every night,

now but a distant memory.

And you know that

they never truly flicker out

in your mind,

and that new flames will alight,

But you know now that you can move through them.

Not unscathed, no, but unfazed,

And that they too

will one day exist only in numbed memory

Until one day,

the flame that is you

flickers out.