I will not flinch.

Not from the ache in my bones
nor the heaviness that gathers in the folds of my spirit.
This pain—raw, holy, and uninvited—
has set up camp in the hollows of my ribcage,
and I have made it tea.

I will not cast it out.
I will sit with it, name it,
trace its origins like constellations
stitched across the firmament of my becoming.
I will not beg for numbness.
Let it throb. Let it throb like a warning drum,
a sacred rhythm that means: I am still here.

I will press my lips to the fire
and drink it slow.
Not because I am unbroken,
but because I am willing to be broken beautifully.

I will feed this flame with the letters I never sent,
with the nights I cried into my own hands,
with the echoes of voices that told me I’d never rise.
I will burn what tried to bury me.
I will turn grief into gasoline.

And when I walk,
the earth will remember me not as a man
who suffered quietly,
but as one who lit his pain
like a lantern
and kept walking into the dark—
glowing.