Daughter of Ash and Dawn

I was not born quiet.
I was born with lightning braided into my veins,
with a tongue tasting of salt and prophecy,
with lungs full of smoke that never belonged to me.

They tell me youth is a candle,
a flame meant to flicker and die,
but what if I am not wax?
What if I am burning incense,
a body made to smolder slow,
to fill the room with something holy and unbearable,
to leave ashes you can never sweep away?

Tell me —
if I speak in fire,
will you call it madness?
If I bleed in poetry,
will you call it weakness?
If I refuse to bow,
will you name me ungrateful,
or will you dare to call me alive?

I am half-girl, half-earthquake,
but do you know what it means
to carry fault lines in your chest,
to love and crack in the same breath,
to shatter and still glow
like glass catching the sun?

My mother gave me silence,
wrapped in folded hands.
I burned it into thunder.
I carved it into a hymn.
Does the smoke of my rebellion
reach her, even now?
Does she recognize me
in the sparks that fly from her prayers?

This is not a phase.
This is scripture in disguise.
This is a revolution
wearing chipped nail polish and bitten lips,
this is the gospel of a girl
who will not stop burning.

And tell me —
when the smoke clears,
when even my shadow flickers and dissolves,
when all you can taste is the incense of my absence —
will you call it love,
or will you call it war?