Crow and Flame

There is a particular kind of emotional toll that comes from realizing you were never the enemy.

That you just happened to be nearby when the bombs went off.

Some people wage wars against themselves so violently that everyone around them becomes collateral damage. Partners. Children. Friends. Strangers standing too close to the blast radius. They bleed on people who never held the knife.

And the cruelest part is that wounded people often do not look like villains.

Sometimes they look like exhausted mothers, worn out fathers.
Sometimes they look like trembling lovers.
Sometimes they look like people trying desperately to outrun ghosts that no one else can see.

But pain does not become harmless simply because it is understandable.

A drowning person can still pull others under.

A burning house does not ask permission before the flames spread.

There are people who carry entire battlefields inside themselves. Old shame stitched into their ribs. Rage packed behind their teeth. Fear sewed into a mask as control. And instead of turning inward to face the wreckage, they declare war on everything that reminds them that they are hurting.

Sometimes that war sounds like screaming.
Sometimes it sounds like silence.
Sometimes it sounds like manipulation so subtle you only recognize it years later.

Sometimes it sounds like:
“You made me this way.”

As though accountability can be outsourced.
As though pain is transferable.
As though hurting others is somehow cleaner than hurting themselves.

They burn the villages first…

The innocent things, soft things.
The people who loved them despite the plumes and ashes.

You can spend years trying to become fireproof for someone who is determined to self-destruct. You learn to shrink yourself around their moods. You memorize the weather patterns of their anger. You become hypervigilant, watching for the first spark, believing if you are careful enough you can prevent the explosion.

You cannot because the war was never truly about you. That realization is both devastating and freeing.

Devastating because you understand that you could not have saved them by loving harder.
Freeing because you finally stop mistaking survival for failure.

Some of us were taught that compassion means staying inside burning buildings.

It does not.

You are allowed to grieve the wounded parts of someone while still acknowledging the wounds they gave you.

Both things can exist together.

The crow understands this better than most creatures.

Crows will circle battlefields, not because they created the ruin, but because they survive it. Because they know how to pick through wreckage without becoming part of the graveyard themselves.

There is wisdom in leaving before the fire reaches your wings.

There is wisdom in admitting:
I was collateral damage here.

Not the cause.
Not the cure.
Just someone caught in the crossfire of another person’s unhealed war.

And surviving that is not weakness.

It is survival.