A phoenix — luminous, fervid, ignified with the flame of her hope.
To **** a phoenix is not to strike her down —
but to aim the bullet directly at the will that keeps her rising.
To destroy her is to take the flame she thrives in
and turn it into the fire that consumes her.
To **** a phoenix is to corrupt her understanding of that flame —
to make her doubt the very thing that is her identity.
It is not the flame that truly brings her to defeat —
but the knife of meaning others twist within it.
Teach the phoenix — teach her young,
for the best results, they like to say.
Teach her that pain is proof of failure.
That the heat of her own flame is danger.
That to fall while reaching is shame,
and that to burn is weakness, not growth.
They do not warn her — they redefine her fire.
And so she learns to fear her own light,
while others smile at the success of their undoing.
They carve lies into her spine:
That to rise is expected,
but to falter — even once — is disgrace,
and to become unworthy of ever having wings.
They praised her brilliance,
then twisted it into a new definition: perfection, or nothing at all.
A cruel form of violence:
to make one’s essence conditional,
to hold admiration like a gun to her head,
and call the threat an act of love.
And once the phoenix is dead —
she was never really born.
Not in their eyes.
She had the potential
to carry the undying, luminous flame of a phoenix,
but they watched her lose it
and called her a disappointment.
But it was not her failure.
She was a child.
What did she know of fire?
She was taught to fear it.
What they mistook for nurture was the slow architecture of ruin — and still, they smiled as the ashes fell.
