We are the fire that forgets it is fire,
the city smoke curling around our ribs,
the hurtling, brilliant bodies of want and regret.
We clutch at each other like lifelines in the subway tunnels of our hearts,
screaming because the world doesn’t listen
and because sometimes, we don’t listen either.
Human nature—oh, it’s a masterclass in contradiction.
We are saints and sinners
drunk on memory and half-formed dreams,
throwing ourselves against walls we built with our own hands.
We love with a reckless, punk devotion
while knowing the same hands can destroy
everything we thought sacred.
Remember the quiet corners of your childhood—
the sand burned between your toes,
the glass of rotgut whiskey spilled on the carpet,
the first kiss that left your tongue buzzing
and your chest hollow.
That memory is not past.
It lives in you, in the beat of your fists,
in the shadow that waits behind every choice.
We are instructions in motion:
Breathe when it burns.
Speak when it terrifies.
Touch when you are trembling.
Fail because failing is the only honest grammar we have.
And yet, we rise.
Like a hurricane, like a drumbeat doubled over itself,
like the hip-hop of our own hearts,
we rage, we love, we fall, we stand.
We are infinite in our smallness,
feral and divine in the same exhale,
searing and tender,
a riot and a lullaby.
We are human nature—
brilliant, combustible, uncontainable.
And maybe the only way to survive it
is to love it, every broken, beautiful second of it.