My Fire Work

When it first happened, I was only four. I was so young that, at the time, it was beautiful and fascinating and entertaining. Best of all, it was all mine. I found that I could create it whenever I wanted. I never told anyone about it because I feared they would take it away from me somehow.


But this was a gift no one could take away from me. So it turned into a curse.


I knew that my talents would eventually be found out. I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep it as my secret. Even if I had kept my mouth sealed tight, someone would have known.


Though, in retrospect, I really shouldn't have said anything at all. Even if they were going to find out. Maybe I could have hid away longer. But you can't change most things in life. Especially the past. You can't change the past.


"We said you had two hours." Her voice was so irritating. It was like nails on a chalkboard mixed with the screeching cries of starving infants. Sometimes, it just sounded like the crying infants.


"I know you heard me," she said in my ear. Then she kicked my chair. It was always violence and threats and spitting with her. She was so predictable. Everyone here was just so predictable.


"You're so lucky we have a need for you," she spit. I wiped it off the back of my neck and brushed my hand off on my jeans. They make me think of her even though I try not to. And I try really hard not to.


"Could you imagine what your life would be like if we hadn't found you?" she said.


"Yes," I said, speaking for the first time in days. "I can imagine what life would be like." My words were labored and my mouth was dry, but it felt good to say something. I'm never alone because of my gift. But when there is my gift, there are no people, and so no one to speak to. No one to tell anything to.


Do you know what that's like? To have all these friends and all this warmth surrounding you, but no one to talk to? No one to regard you as a living, breathing person? It drives some people mad, I hear. It drove many like me mad. I heard their screams the other day. Their piercing, loud, crazy screams. I think they swallowed themselves in it. In their gifts. One day they were there. Then they were gone. I think they surrendered because it's really too much. It's too much to handle for one person. The loneliness, the secrecy, the shame. It wasn't my fault for telling her. For wanting someone to share this burden with. She didn't have to do anything. All she had to do was listen. That's all she had to do. Why couldn't she do that for me? Why not?


"Boss, guys, guys, he's doing it! He's doing it now!"


I spoke to a few people about our gift. The older ones said it was linked to our emotions. That our craft would take the form of whatever we were feeling at the moment. Usually, under great stress, our gift could manifest into something dangerous. I could feel it now, feel what they feared happening right now. Every muscle in my body was tense. I felt like stone and jelly at the same time. And there was so much pressure. Just...so much pressure everywhere. At all sides. Surrounding me. I felt like I was going to suffocate under it all.


But then...I popped. All the pent up energy and fury and emotions just tumbled out of me. They just spilled. When I could open my eyes, I knew why no one could speak. What I had created was my worst and best yet.


People like me, we call them fire works. There aren't the fireworks that shoot up into the sky and explode. What we create are beings that explode within us. It's in that explosion that allows them to manifest. And when they do, when they're born, we bring them out of us. In essence, they are extensions of our souls, of our deepest desires. They are part of us, but just barely. Once they're out, they are their own.


My fire work was beautiful.


And so unpredictable.