Crowned cowardly whisper as an oath once,
held it to fire, asked it to name itself aloud.
It trembled and hid in the long shadow of a shame.
Rehearsed doubt and expected smoke.
Same match to air, but the flame answered flame without a flicker.
Let me fold into it, small, unasked questions dissolving,
edges softening into something almost kind.
And let me stay, not because I belong,
but because leaving feels like falling
into a world that never learned how to catch.
It holds me the way gravity should have.
I helped stitch this sky, but now you're flying in its light with foreginers
who claim to speak it like a native tongue.
I remain where the dream was first imagined.
A ghost in the blueprint;
uninvited to the house I helped name.