Skip to content
Stretch Journal
Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Issue VIII (2023)
    • Memoir
    • Research
    • Fiction
  • Previous Issues
    • Issue VII (2022)
      • Memoir
      • Poetry
      • Fiction
      • Research
  • Authors
    • Authors (2023)
    • Authors (2022)
  • Archive
Menu

A Friend of the Flames

Posted on April 28, 2022May 1, 2022 by Daniel Zapata

By Lily Mayo

I’ve been hearing a lot of people talking about how when someone’s born into a burning house, they think that the world is on fire.

I think that’s bullshit.  

Because the truth about burning houses is that we still look through their windows. And though the fog might cloud the glass, we can still see a distorted truth. 

I can’t survive out there. My lungs are equipped to fill with flame not oxygen. Heat not air. They ache and burn, but that is how I like it, because that is what I know. I don’t know how to live in a house that’s not on fire. 

When you’re born into a burning house, you forget what it’s like for somebody to have a match held to their skin for the first time. You forget what it’s like to have a flame kiss you when you have been drowning in its affection for so long. 

When I walk out those doors I know I’ve left the flame, but I still feel that heat on my skin and I don’t know how to explain it to you. My bones are stoking the fire, my body is turning on a spit. 

Yes it hurts to burn but at least I’m warm. The world could be so cold. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you live in a house that’s not on fire. I hate that you can.

And that’s bullshit.

Categories

  • Issue VII (2022)
    • Fiction
    • Memoir
    • Poetry
    • Research
  • Issue VIII (2023)
    • Fiction
    • Memoir
    • Research

Archives

  • May 2023
  • April 2022

Navigation

  • Home
  • About
  • Issue VIII (2023)
    • Memoir
    • Research
    • Fiction
  • Previous Issues
    • Issue VII (2022)
      • Memoir
      • Poetry
      • Fiction
      • Research
  • Authors
    • Authors (2023)
    • Authors (2022)
  • Archive
© 2023 Stretch Journal | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme