The Air Was Tired

I was born in the fire.

Third degree burns covered my skin before I even had the words to name the pain.

I was born into dysfunction,

into a house where love had curfews

and comfort never came home on time.

I had a mother who hated to see you win.

A father absent, or worse; present and poison.

I grew up in armor.

I built it myself from silence and side eyes.

I wore it over a fragile heart that learned too young what hostile hands could do

when love is something they never learned to give.

I had a mother who abused substances my whole life.

She still does.

She loves the streets more than she ever loved herself.

And so, I learned to carry myself;

to carry the weight,

to hold my own hand,

to pretend brave while shaking underneath it all.

I spent years biting down on my voice

Every thought held hostage in the back of my throat because saying it out loud meant disbelief.

Meant interrogation.

Meant eyes that questioned instead of protected.

I remember the ceiling

my oldest witness in that tiny room in a house that smelled like stale smoke and broken promises.

The air itself was tired.

The air hung heavy in my chest like a truth too big for a child to hold.

I remember being woken in the middle of the night to

mother returning from a disappearing act,

more high than whole, more ghost than mom.

I remember how we all tried to do things right,

how my siblings and I became experts in not making waves, in reading the room like it might explode.

I remember the words she drilled in our bones:“What happens in this house stays in this house.”

And so I stayed quiet.

Stayed hidden.

Stayed aching.

I remember.

God, I remember.

And still,

I rise from those ashes.

Burned, but still breathing.

Still learning how to tell the truth even if my voice shakes.

Still walking out of that smoke with my name intact.

I wasn’t meant to survive this. But I did.

And that alone is a kind of miracle that no fire can take from me.