I hear two of you in my mind, one a feeble flickering ember and the other an inferno, an unquenchable blaze of frenzy.

The ember can only inevitably wither and succumb to the weight of never becoming a blaze;

Only too aware it will never be a beacon,

never bright enough to scorch,

or savage enough to render destruction.

She is quiet and never thinks to seek the spark that could set her ablaze;

for the weight of being small and insignificant is too much.

The inferno I can hear tearing, rampaging through the fabric of my brain and setting fire to my preserved nests of remaining self.

I am a fool, for I sift through the debris, the ashen nothing, and still expect to rebuild from dust.

Looking for scraps of bone, hoping for their white glint in the ashen nothingness, but there is only dust and nothing ever left.

The particles weep softly from between my fingers, crying for what is lost and can never be recovered.

I sweep them to the side of my brain that houses a museum of cremated selves, seeing that the pile of dust only gets bigger and that I can still feel them there in the corners of my mind,

they rustle with the wind of sleep,

when it is quiet

and scream to come back,

to be made whole,

to be given another chance to be a part of me;

they scream for resurrection.

But the inferno will always take all that is built whilst the ember simply watches on.

I cannot stop her blaze,

her rampage,

there is not a pill on earth that can satiate her,

or calm her,

or render her small enough to ignore her.

She screams at oblivion,

she screams with guilt at the dust piles and all that she has burned,

because more than anything, she just wants to leave herself intact but is doomed to repeat the destruction of any new nest and any new pillar that is erected.

This was written by our contributing writer, Katie Rackham. She also created the artwork you see with the poem as well.