I believe in the story.
Not fate.
Not prophecy.
But the raw, uncut story of my life—
written in blood,
in silence,
in the suffering I cannot escape.

Life strikes.
Life gives.
Always both.
Always with a price.

I am a tree—
rooted in pain,
stretching toward a sky
that has never answered me.

And still,
I persist.
Each year as my leaves desert me,
I cling to this ever-spinning coil—
with cool pleasure,
with sharp pain,
trusting I might survive another fall,
to be woken
by another living spring.

The world is broken.
But I remain.

When the pyre comes for me,
its bones will be my bones.
My ribs will crack like dry timber,
my marrow will hiss and spit—
oil feeding the flame.
I will burn by my own fire,
the source and the sacrifice,
fuel and funeral together.
Every splinter of bone,
every ember of flesh,
rising as smoke
to prove I lived,
to prove I expired.

Because I have walked the unknown road.
I have swallowed its dust,
bled in its silence,
and I have come back with this:

I believe in the story.
And the story—
is me.