Low Flame

A rage that simmers but never boils

I wish I was the kind who screamed.

Who spat syllables like shrapnel,

who threw words like sparks,

who let them land wherever they burned.

The kind who cried loud enough

the walls remembered,

for someone to notice.

But I’m the silent kind-

the nod-and-smile-through kind,

the it’s fine, don’t worry kind,

the swallow-it-whole kind,

until it almost sounds true.

The kind who lets rot bloom quietly

in the chest,

who folds rage into origami shapes

and hides them under the bed.

There’s a fire that never gets air,

buried deep under polite exhaustion,

feeding on my quiet until

I can’t tell id I’m soft

or just hollowed.

I mother children and adults alike,

pour comfort into everyone else’s cup

and drink the dregs.

They call it kindness.

They call it generosity.

They never call it what it is:

slow suffocation with a gentle face.

They thank me for being “so strong,”

and I smile like a locked door.

No one sees how it festers-

how I blur at the edges,

how I go missing in my own life,

how resentment grows like vines

around the things I love.

How everyone sighs

when I cannot remember how to be human.

As id my emptiness is inconvenient,

as id I’ve failed to hold form

for their comfort.

And there’s a low-burning rage that hums,

steady as heartbeat, patient as rot-

a low burning rage that says:

I could have been something.

I wish I could howl.

I wish I could burn out loud.

But I only smolder,

A low flame smoldering my ribs,

consuming nothing but myself.

If only the world had let me

stop holding it together

for one goddamn minute.

-Koii