I wake up burning and the sheets are ash around my body,
another day fed to the furnace of what I can’t forgive.
Rage is the only prayer I know by heart anymore—
the liturgy of fuck you sung in perfect pitch.
She says I’m beautiful when I’m angry
and I think she means dangerous,
a lit match in a room full of gasoline.
I’ve been swallowing fire since I learned to speak,
turning every slight into ammunition.
The anger keeps me warm through winters
that would freeze a gentler man to death.
I run on fury like a machine runs on steam,
pressure building in my chest until I move—
wrath is my gasoline, my coffee, my reason for waking.
They told me once that holding anger
is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.
But what if the poison is what keeps me alive,
what if rage is the only thing preventing me from fading?
I dream in red now, violent watercolors
bleeding through my sleep.
I wake with my fists clenched tight enough
to break my own fingers.
She touches my face in the morning
and I’m already somewhere else,
already burning someone down in my mind.
The fury feels cleaner than sadness,
more honest than hope.
At least when I’m angry I know exactly where I stand
and who I’m standing against.
I’ve built monuments to my hatred,
temples to the people who wronged me,
and I worship there daily,
lighting candles made of grudges that never burn down.
I could forgive,
but forgiveness is for people who can afford to forget.
And I’m too broke on mercy,
too rich in vendetta.
Let the anger drive. Let it steer me
through the wreckage I’m creating.
—
Sometimes in the dark I wonder
what I’d be without this fire,
if I’d just be smoke,
just absence where a person used to stand.
The rage gives me shape,
gives me bones to hang my skin on.
Without it I’m just fog,
just the idea of a man dissolving in the morning light.
She asks me once what I’m so angry about
and I can’t remember the origin anymore.
Just know the fuel keeps coming,
endless supply of reasons to burn.
Maybe I’m addicted to the heat,
the way it clarifies everything into enemies and targets.
The world makes sense when I’m furious—
simple mathematics of who fucked me over
and how I’ll make them pay.
There is romance in the rage,
beauty in the breaking.
When I’m angry I’m alive
in ways that peace could never touch.
She says she loves me anyway.
I believe her when my fists unclench,
when the fire dies down enough to let her close.
—
Morning comes and I’m still burning,
another day of using rage as currency.
She’s beside me breathing softly
and I’m already cataloging fresh wounds.
The anger never sleeps.
Neither do I, really.
Just close my eyes and dream of fire.