Fire Goddess

Transformation is not always gentle.
Days are, it arrives as fire,
stripping away everything false,
leaving only what can endure the heat.
This poem came from that furnace.

Dance, Fire Goddess,
as the flames surround you,
stripping illusions to ash.
What remains is raw flesh, hard bone,
the truth that endures the burning.

Leap into the furnace.
For it is here, under pressure,
that steel is forged,
and only when you are strong enough
does destruction arrive to teach you.

Fall, Fire Goddess.
Die into the blaze.
For endings demand self-destruction,
the tearing apart of what was,
so the phoenix may rise,
new life transmuted from ash,
an alchemy of sorrow into radiance.

And then, rise.
Light up the sky.
Illuminate the dark.
Combust into brilliance,
a fire so fierce it implodes and explodes at once,
revealing the heart of everything.