Stalks of Fire

In late summer, when most things collapse,

I find stalks of flame-colored bloom

clawing their way through dry soil.

Not delicate, not ornamental

they rise like warnings,

lanterns lit in a field of surrender,

a dare to anything that thought

the season was already over.

I know that dare.

My body has lived it..

scarred skin,

marrow that still remembers

the taste of fists and silence.

Healing didn’t arrive as comfort;

it arrived bitter,

like iron on the tongue,

like medicine that burns as it cures.

I drank it anyway,

let it scour me raw,

because survival isn’t sweet..

It’s sharp,

and it leaves marks.

Now I walk with my head tilted to the wind,

ears tuned to shifts others ignore.

I am cautious, not cowardly.

I have learned to read silence

the way some read scripture.

Every pause a warning,

every change in air is

a map of what’s coming.

I bend when I must,

but not to break..

only to gather myself,

so when the storm tries to rip me out,

my roots bite down harder.

And there is still a kind of radiance in it.
Not the soft kind,
not something polished for comfort,
but the blaze that stands against decay.

It is defiance,

yellow fire set against the creeping dark,

saying: I will not vanish quietly.

Even in the dying season,

there is something left to burn,

something that refuses to kneel.

When I see them on the edges of fields,

I see myself..

gritty, weather-marked,

bitter at the start but strong enough

to keep standing.

I whisper their name only once..

Goldenrod..

but by then I’ve already claimed the lesson:

to endure with teeth bared,

to stay alert in silence,

to be the flare in the field..

a survivor blazing

in the very place destruction tried

to bury me.