velvet

I am a bomb with a velvet touch, a danger dressed in soft skin. People see the quiet in me and mistake it for safety, but safety has never been safe— not in my world, not in my bones. I don’t explode because I want to burn everything down. I explode because I’m terrified of sinking, terrified of drowning in my own silence while everyone else pretends not to hear me calling. I am a girl wired with storms, a heartbeat that trembles like a fuse. And when the room grows calm, when someone calls it peace, I flinch— because peace is just the moment right before the floor gives out. So I break first. I fall first. I light the match with shaking hands just to see in the dark. It’s not destruction I’m after. It’s air. It’s breath. It’s not going under again. If I scorch the world, it’s only because I never learned how to keep myself from drowning any other way. And somewhere beneath the ash, beneath the girl who detonates before she’s left, there’s a softness that still wants to live— a softness that’s tired of mistaking survival for ruin.