Into the fire.

The silence between us like Gödel's dance—A proof unfinished, a question unsigned.

You see, every line I spoke was not quite whole, Not because I couldn’t, but because I knew, There are truths in love no logic can hold, And hearts are always one step beyond what’s true.

Like Wittgenstein said, we play games with words, But the rules, they shift when we start to feel. Each "I love you" is a move unheard, A friction that makes every silence real.

Yet, even when meaning slips through our hands, And what I meant to say remains unsaid, You find my absence, and there you stand—Reading the spaces between the lines I bled.

So here we are, incomplete as ever, knowing full well, we will never be done.

But still, there’s something in not knowing,
That makes the unspeakable part of the fun.

wind, carrying the weight of those who came before us, the ones who loved too fiercely, who burned in their own flames and drowned in the rivers of their hearts.

We walk in their shadows, bare feet sinking into cold earth, breathing the same air that once filled their lungs,
but we know nothing—nothing of the silence they left behind.

We offer our hearts to the fire, believing, like fools, that love will rise again—like the sun never doubts the dawn.
But truth is buried deep, far beneath the soil, where no light reaches, where bones rest heavy and forgotten,
waiting to be swallowed by time.

They say the dead listen—
but do they?
Or do they weep for us, knowing we are doomed to never understand the cost of loving like this?

there’s no voice from the trees, no soft light to lead the way.
Just the weight of survival—of waking each day with less of yourself, until even your name fades into a ghost that drifts on the same wind that took theirs.

We kneel before the earth, press our hands into the dirt, and beg for forgiveness.

But this time you tell yourself, this time we’re different. You see, survival is not a quiet thing. It’s fire and blood, torn hearts and broken bones, And somewhere in the middle of it all—learn what it really means to stand.

There’s a reason the phoenix burns, A reason we offer ourselves to the flame again and again—It’s not for the light. It’s for the heat.
For the moment the fire touches your skin, When you feel everything burn away, And there’s nothing left but you—Raw, fierce, alive. The oil in your skin boiling in agony

The ancestors are watching, but they’re not weeping.
They know the cost. They paid it too. They paid it in blood and breath, And now they watch to see if we’re willing to do the same.

This is not a story of quiet grief. This is not the silence of bones beneath the earth. This is the scream of every soul who ever burned for something bigger than themselves, Of every hand that reached for something more
And found the world falling apart beneath them, or fighting them actively, setting traps, but much like the yin and the yang, paradoxically we are also at our peak in many ways

So yes, we walk among their shadows, Bare feet on cold earth, But we are not bound by the ground. We are the fire that will rise, The ones who will burn it all down, And still stand, ash-covered and laughing, not a manic mad laugh, but one of love, Because we know the truth: The cost of survival is not loss.

It’s the willingness to be remade. Every time we love, Every time we let ourselves break, We are reborn.

love isn’t what ties us to this world. It’s the raw earth, the scar it leaves behind.
The spaces it carves into us, The places where we burn so hot, We come back new.

The sky doesn’t weep for the storm beneath it—It clears. And we, like the sky, Will clear too.

But first, we burn.
We burn for the love we couldn’t hold, For the lives we couldn’t save, For every moment we thought the fire was the end, Not knowing it was just the beginning.

So here we are, standing in the ashes, Pressing our hands to the earth, Not begging for forgiveness, But ready.
Ready for what comes next, Ready to be remade, Ready to rise.

The wind isn’t carrying us away—
It’s calling us forward.
Into the fire.

Thank you for reading!

Copyright Statement for XAWAT

© [2024] [Travis L McCracken, XAWAT]. All rights reserved.

All content, including but not limited to written works, images, graphics, designs, and other intellectual property, featured on XAWAT (www.xawat.com) is the exclusive property of, unless otherwise stated. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, modification, or use of any content, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from the copyright owner is strictly prohibited.