I stand at the edge of memory's clearing,
watching my childhood home consumed
by flame, by the cruel erosion of time,
each beam of laughter crackling,
each wall of safety collapsing inward
like a prayer spoken backwards.

The wildfire sweeps through everything:
Saturday mornings thick with pancake steam,
the way sunlight used to pool
in the corner where I built my kingdoms
from cardboard boxes and infinite dreams.

I am paralyzed, a child again,
hands pressed against invisible glass,
screaming at the inferno
that devours the sanctuary I called home.

Smoke fills my lungs with the bitter taste
of all I cannot save:
the creaking floorboard that announced my midnight wanderings,
the kitchen table scarred with homework tears
and birthday cake celebrations.

But listen
in the crackling of loss,
in the hiss of vanishing,
something else stirs.

From the white-hot core of grief,
wings unfurl like broken prayers
learning to fly again.
I am the ember that refused to die,
the stubborn spark,
to the hungry flames of forgetting.

What rises from these ashes
is not the home I lost
it is me, transformed,
carrying the warmth of every moment
that mattered enough to burn eternal,
my heart a furnace where love
learned to make itself immortal.

The phoenix knows this truth:
some things must be consumed
before they can become holy,
before they can learn to soar
on wings made of everything
we thought we'd lost forever.

I am both the fire and the rising,
both the child who watched it burn
and the child who learned to fly.