FanStory.com - The Purifying Flame by K. Olsen

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"The Purifying Flame"

Chapter 1
The Crucible of Self

By K. Olsen

My body burns with phoenix fire:

the sufferings of old sins,

fears crackling up with white-hot heat,

doubts choking with acrid smoke,

humiliation and shame ravaging

as if tongues of flame from infernal forges—

while inside the crucible, I and my disorder sit.

The disorder screams as the temperature climbs,

and perhaps so do I, but fire purifies.

If this is to be my pyre,

I will let it heat and consume us,

and burn until nothing impure remains—

until my Self rises from the crucible

like the reborn paragon of flaming wings

blazes upward in the sky,

trailing my illness's ashes from its pinions.

Let them fall scattered to the earth

and speak no more.

I cannot control the flames,

but my wings are mine to find.

Author Notes My progress through hospitalization for my eating disorder has been anything but smooth, but this is where I am sitting currently.

Chapter 2
Graveyards into Gardens

By K. Olsen

Isn’t it lovely that we live in a world
where graveyards can become gardens?
How can one look around and say,
“Grace does not dwell in this place”?

There is something so comforting
in knowing that barbed wire and poison
yield to poppies and field-flowers—
that scars fade from angry red to serene silver:
a body’s kintsugi, by its very nature—
that fire-scarred landscapes where carelessness
burned thousands of acres in a few days
will return to green growth someday,
pines seeded by the flames.

Healing is not the exception, it is the law,
and all wounds soothe and close in their time.
There is only the matter of patience,
allowing grief to sweep through you like waves
until transfiguring grace finds a home in that pain.

Chapter 3
Confessions

By K. Olsen

Confessions, I confess, are not my strength,

yet every time I see your blue-sky eyes,

I feel the universe pause and catch its breath

as I have often forgotten to.

It is difficult to exist in the world

with this secret locked in me,

and double the challenge of staying open,

although you place your faith in me.

I wonder oftentimes in quiet places

what cosmic good I did to tip

Fortune's favored scales enough

to bring you close to me.

And yet, this aching distance remains

between what I am and what I wish,

whether because my words mute become

or our stars simply do not align.

Still, I would rather go on feeling

the pain in hopes of tasting sweetness,

than return again to the emptiness

where no hope or longing sits.

They say those who love are blind,

but never have I seen you more clearly

than when we are alone walking

amidst the shadows of both my and your abyss.

Chapter 4
A Reflection on Beauty

By K. Olsen

How strange a thing to think
beauty may be captured with the eye,

when the roots of what is beautiful

run deeper in the heart

than veins of silver and diamond

course down into the earth.

How easily one may mistake

a glowing appearance for some hallowed halo,

when truthfully such things are pyrite—

the gold only fools crow over.

Beauty is not a thing you are,

some ivory pedestal to perch upon;

instead, it is what you do:

the ripples your kindness sends

as love letters to the world around—

grace extended inwards to be reflected beyond.

So when you are tempted

to measure worth by the mirror

whispering imperfections to all who look,

remember:

two dimensions is fine enough for paper dolls,

but human heart and soul divine

cannot be clipped to suit a magazine's collage.

Chapter 5
An Anorexic Love Song

By K. Olsen

It’s so easy to say I would die for you,
living as I have, already lying in the grave.
Instead, I will say this, quivering in fear
of how full my starved heart feels:
I love you so much I will live for you.

I love you so much I will eat,
even when it fills me with fear,
because I cannot bear the thought
of you standing beside my casket.

I love you so much I will exist,
whether I feel I deserve it or not,
because I want to be a part of your life,
not a ghost gliding on the margins.

I love you so much I will cherish my body,
an old foe I abused and controlled to near death,
because I want to wrap arms around you,
because I want my heart to keep beating for you.

I love you so much I will love myself,
because you have shown me grace,
because I want to be there with you
through health and sickness, dark and light.

I love you so much I will live,
clinging to hope even when it scares me,
nourishing a future instead of destroying it,
because I want to share it with you.

I love you so much I will tell you
when I am out of this hospital bed,
so you know that all of this hardship
I did happily, gratefully, for a chance at us—
I love you so much I will live.

Chapter 6
Heaven Reaches Down

By K. Olsen

Sometimes it seems the entire focus of people’s lives
is to gaze heavenward on some eternal bliss,
and hope to climb closer with every step,
only to slide back down as human error clips them,
foolishly forgetting Heaven reaches down.

But I promise you, as certain as I able,
into our most wretched of abysses,
both through the beautiful moments Nature provides
and in the agonies we turn towards and shoulder,
you will see Heaven reaches down.

How can I look at a sunrise arrayed in golden radiance,
the spun crimson threads of cloud across a lake,
mirrored so there is no division ‘twixt earth and sky,
and think any differently of it?
A little reminder Heaven reaches down.

Or, confronted by a suffering, opening my heart like a door,
I realize that the grace on the other side
is the only true healing for it,
the only path out of the shadowed valley
where Heaven reaches down.

It looks at me through careworn faces of people I love
and those who have loved me, whether parted or alongside,
but also peeks from the eyes of those I do not know,
yet hurt in ways I know how to balm, which makes them no strangers.
In them, Heaven reaches down.

You see, when I fix my thoughts on perfected bliss,
my hands do not serve, my words are corroded copper,
for I am needed here, not there, and useful as slag
until I tell myself to turn my eyes earthward,
and remember Heaven reaches down.

The wise man cautions against the material things,
and perhaps the wounds I bind are immaterial
in the grandest sense of what all this means,
but they are real, and I know with every mended stitch
Heaven reaches down.

I find it looking in eyes that won’t meet mine,
I find it in painful places I strain to reach,
and I know it is there when their fingers clutch mine,
just as mine have clutched theirs in similar straits:
Heaven reaches down.

Chapter 7
For B

By K. Olsen

Saffron petals spreading to the sky
are amber proofs of dreaming high.
Wherever the light goes you follow,
doing so, you drag sun to shaded hollow.

What joy you bring to the world,
sunflower growing where dark swirled:
sweet color added to brighten tears,
fresh yellow hopes in spite of fears.

Grow tall and proud on jewel-green,
and remember to be heard and seen.
Everywhere you go, Queen of Flowers,
you brighten our midnight hours.

I am so grateful to have known you,
a soul so rare and shining true.
Thank you for gentle petals along my way.
May all the love follow you home to stay.

Chapter 8
For S

By K. Olsen

Roses are only found where the thorns grow,
and you must remember your resemblance
to those most beautiful of flowers.

So boldly dig your roots in deep,
and soak up sun with your emerald leaves,
and show your wonderful Self to the sky,
like radiant rose petals on display.

You are worthy of the space and light,
the water, and all good things of the earth.
You are held dear by many friends,
more than enough for a better life.

Though it seems difficult, I know,
hold onto your deep-feeling heart,
because it is a petal-strewn portal
into a brighter, blossoming world.

Thorns are nothing to be frightened of—
learn to thrive among them as roses do,
as I have faith you can bloom.

Author Notes For a young fellow patient with BPD as well as an eating disorder, who struggles with losing people and is going out to live on her own for the first time.

Chapter 9
The Well of Styx

By K. Olsen

I must not keep returning to this well,
ringed by tombstones and flooded
by waters of Stygian flow,
for each bucket I lower hollows me.

I dare not keep returning to this well,
overgrown with shattering thorns
we, unheard many, call Depression:
even though leaving it untended hurts.

I cannot keep returning to this well,
for it makes sorrows the whole of me
and Death the ripples cast by stones,
or it will drain down to my soul.

But can you leave Me at all,
or will I drown you like the stones?

Chapter 10
The Mother of Gaps

By K. Olsen

Your distance bruises my faith
in such petty, yet profound ways,
more than a bully’s cut down ever could.
The gap between you and I
is one I feel I must always bend to bridge,
even as I want to scream, “Notice me!”
Yet every tug at the sleeve is ignored,
until tired and tired and oh so tired,
I cease to pull.

Is it any wonder I disappeared?
Is it surprising I shrank and withered
like a neglected houseplant—
greenery turned sallow and fragile?
This is the grief of the gaps:
the hollowness where expectation—
no, not even: where hope and childish wishes
plunge into the yawning, bottomless ravine
of cold, unconcerned Reality.

Yet you seem surprised, as if my wails
come causeless from some other planet,
because everything is fine:
three square meals, a decent roof,
even clothes on my back.
How could I be anything less than grateful?
Am I ungrateful in my pain?

I would trade security in the physical
for your attention and care in a heartbeat,
but wishes do not rewrite history,
and some things, it seems, are in the bone.

I will love you, but let you go from me,
like a storm-tossed anchor slowly cut free
I do not know if I am the woman you wished:
always chasing your shadow,
clutching at crumbs as they fall,
afraid to stand on my own and be seen,
because what if I am not enough?

I will love you, but this is my farewell:
not to you, but the you I hoped you might be,
and the me who hoped for such things.
She is unmade by her grief,
while I learn to grow in the shattered heart
she left behind.

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