every time she burns to ashes
If Sunjata required reassurance, she’d give it. She’d grant it. She’d will it from the enamel lacquered and stuck to her bones, from the grit fortified in her limbs, from the reel of tenacity clawing at her ribcage. “He is.” She would ignite it in a wall of fortitude and might and sheer, damned endurance, too audacious and emboldened to care about the cinders and embers at her feet, too idiotic to wonder if it was all too much or not enough. The youth laced her fingers with his and squeezed again; she was here, she was present, she was real, she was tangible, she was family and friend and flames, and the world wouldn’t scorch this, take this.
Her sorrows weren’t with the house, or the potential memories of it. Perhaps she’d had so little sanctuary or shelter in her lifetime, that she never thought they’d last, or she’d moved so often that the inevitable plunged its way down her spine. “It’s okay. We can build a new one, all together.” And her smile bloomed, little rhapsodies of crimson blossoms, sprigs of fortune rather than the hellhole they’d buried themselves within. “It’s the people inside that make the home. Not the structure.”
Her sorrows weren’t with the house, or the potential memories of it. Perhaps she’d had so little sanctuary or shelter in her lifetime, that she never thought they’d last, or she’d moved so often that the inevitable plunged its way down her spine. “It’s okay. We can build a new one, all together.” And her smile bloomed, little rhapsodies of crimson blossoms, sprigs of fortune rather than the hellhole they’d buried themselves within. “It’s the people inside that make the home. Not the structure.”
she knows how to rise again
Melita
