The Arsonist of Becoming

I.
I named him once; this fevering god;
not ambition, no,
but a dragon with blood-stained wings
circling the altar of my sleep.
I had called him drive,
as one names a tempest weather,
as one names collapse progress.
But no more.
He is flame without hearth,
he is thirst with no cup,
he is motion's ghost,
eating the still.

II.
I lived in the cathedral of Next.
Each step a sermon.
Each goal a stained-glass hunger.
And the silence between bells;
that was failure.
That was death dressed in leisure.
I feared
a day without striving
more than a night without stars.

III.
Oh, how dopamine chimes!
It sings not peace, not home,
but faster, farther, again.
I drank that music
as if it were wine from God’s own wrist,
but it was saltwater.
And my lips cracked with longing.
And my bones turned into calendars.
And my prayers became metrics.

IV.
I never noticed the children in the garden.
I never touched the moss beneath the bench.
The lovers left,
not with anger,
but with weary eyes
that could no longer watch me sprint
toward a finish line I kept moving.

V.
One day, the ache arrived early.
Before coffee. Before emails.
Just there; like a bruise
on the part of the soul that once laughed.
It asked nothing.
It just waited.

VI.
So I stayed still.
Not as punishment.
Not as rebellion.
But as liturgy.
I did not write.
I did not solve.
I did not climb.
And the world;
the damn stubborn, holy world;
did not end.

VII.
Now I journal what I didn’t do.
Celebrate naps.
Kiss slowness on the mouth.
I track laughter like prophets track stars.
Ask not what earns love;
but what feels like it.

VIII.
To those who cannot stop,
who fear the quiet room,
who dream in spreadsheets
and die in calendars;
I say this:
your soul is not a resume.
You were never meant to achieve your way
into being loved.

The dragon is not slain by swords.
But by stillness.
And the ache that waits
behind the silence,
ready to show you,
you are already whole.

F.S.F.