Chapter 4 – The Girl Who Burned Alone

Keywords: matchstick, shame, room, scream, witch, spine, exile, flame

1. Before anyone called me sacred,

they called me wrong.

Too loud. Too strange.

Too something they didn’t know how to bury properly.

2. I wasn’t born broken —

I was lit.

A matchstick in a world soaked in fear.

No one taught me how to smolder quietly.

3. I tried to fold myself in,

tried to pray in lowercase,

tried to live with the volume down.

But the heat still leaked through my fingertips.

4. The first time I screamed,

the room didn’t flinch.

It turned its back.

That’s when I learned silence is sometimes louder than fire.

5. I carried shame like it was sacred.

Pressed it into my palms,

let it kneel on my chest while I slept.

I thought maybe if I held it tightly enough,

I’d finally be allowed to stay.

6. But shame is not a welcome.

It is a slow exile —

an unholy exit from your own body.

7. They called me witch with their eyes,

even when their mouths said “sweetheart.”

They sensed the spark and feared it.

They sensed the rage and smiled like cowards.

8. So I stopped waiting for them to see me.

I lit myself.

9. I became the bonfire they warned each other about.

I grew teeth in my prayers.

I made altars out of everything that broke me.

10. My back learned to stand alone.

My spine became a sword.

Each vertebra a chapter.

Each bruise a hymn.

11. There were no witnesses.

No one wrote down my pain.

No one named my loneliness divine.

12. But the flame did.

13. The flame watched me.

It didn’t rescue.

It didn’t scold.

It said, “Burn, and be known.”

14. So I did.

15. I burned in secret.

In public.

In silence.

In song.

16. I burned through masks,

through expectations,

through false hopes,

through every room that ever turned its back.

17. I became unbearable.

And in becoming unbearable,

I became undeniable.

18. They don’t have a box for someone like me.

So they tried to write me out.

But you can’t edit out the girl who lit the page on fire.

19. The fire never asked permission.

And neither did I.

20. They say no one survives alone.

But I didn’t survive.

I transformed.

21. I am not a tragedy.

I am the match they dropped.

And I will burn down every room that ever called me too much.

22. In the name of the scream that became a psalm,

the flame that called me daughter,

and the exile that crowned me queen,

Amen.