can you feel it?  
         not the kind of heat  
                that warms  
        but the kind  
                      that           peels.

     i walk around like a furnace in a borrowed skin,  
                  smiling like i’m not  
             a cathedral      on fire  
        with stained glass dreams  
                             melting  
                      down my ribs.

                  no alarms.  
                  no sirens.  
      just the crackle of me, pretending  
                  this is fine.  
    just the sizzle when kindness  
                        touches me too long.

        they glance at my eyes,  
    see the smoke curling quiet in the corners,  
         and call it a shadow.  
     say i should sleep more.  
         say i look “worn out.”
but how do you rest  
    when your bones are matchsticks  
        and your thoughts strike them,  
             over and over,  
        until even your dreams  
                start to sweat?

i eat ice just to hear it scream.  
       drink silence,  
           but it boils in my throat.

          once, i told someone  
            i feel like a house  
                that caught fire quietly  
         from the inside out.  
    they laughed, said  
                        same.  

             but i wonder  
     if they meant it,  
         or if they were just  
              lighting a candle  
        and mistaking it  
                          for hell.

some days i imagine  
     my heart is a kiln  
         shaping nothing  
                 but grief.  
   and still they ask:  
                 “what’s wrong?”

            like this isn’t  
                 a slow apocalypse  
     wearing my clothes.

     like my spine isn’t  
              smoke in formalwear.

             like i don’t wake up  
       with a throat full of embers,  
  trying to cough up the sun.

        tell me—

          do you really feel it?  
     the burn i carry in my smile,  
        the one that eats polite words  
                 and spits them out as ash?

or do i look  
         normal  
                 enough  
                       to ignore?