Her affinity for flame was never set in stone.

She always was flighty like the flickering light emitted from a match, born from brute force and extortion only to provide warmth regardless of her hard feelings regarding the past.

Her feelings have grown a fortress around themselves to protect her slow-burning flame from slowly dying. It flickers at each minor inconvenience, and she feels that each time it occurs that it’ll fail to relight itself the next day.

Her fire isn’t eternal; it’s fueled by the late-night conversations from which she is having withdrawal symptoms. She is just simply too tired.

Too tired to make it past the sunset.

Too tired to make herself stare at blank pieces of paper hoping her will is enough to finish them.

She wishes her flame was bright enough to torch the tormenting pieces of parchment, but the outward flame is all smoke and mirrors with no substance.

Nothing of substance seems to truly fuel her soul of what she craves.

They expected her to burn forever unaided, unguided in the ways of self love and unwavering needs of peace.

She craves peace more than anything but fears the destruction and chaos her small, flickering flame will bring to those around her.

She’d rather go out in a dark cloud of smoke then accidentally set those around her on fire; she will suffer an eternity of unstable, unsure flickering of her flame in order to protect those around her, reaching out for help has never been her style.

She set herself on fire in hopes that the flame would keep her warm like a July bonfire on a cool night, but the smoke is slowly choking her; she should’ve known this wasn’t maintainable.

She should’ve known she couldn’t continue to burn through her mental state in order to appease those around her. No one seems to understand her smoke signals in the dark night sky.

Maybe this was the push she needed to finally learn how to say “no.”

She needs to learn that she can’t accomplish everything; it isn’t even worth trying to if she wants to save herself from becoming burnt out—maybe she already is. 

She should’ve known that the flame would slowly start to devour her being. Now her only chance at peace is that her flame will eventually run out of things to burn if only for her sanity.