Featured Poet - Jennifer Small

BURN HERE

Looking back,

I landed exactly where I belong—

in the middle of the smoke,

inhaling shame.

Ash clings to my fingers,

proof the fire spread as expected.

I knew better.

But the way the spark

spelled my name in the dark,

I could not resist.

This is the part

where I am supposed to say

“I didn’t mean to.”

But I chose the flame

each time it flirted with me.

The map said:

burn here.



QUIET LIKE CHURCH

Years later the town has new scandals

and new girls to point out in line.

Her name has settled into dust on old headlines,

folded under expired coupons and grocery lists.

She lives three cities away now

where no one flinches when she lights a candle.

She is known as the woman

with too many plants on her balcony.

In the mirror, she flirts with herself,

and all she has done.

She maps herself by remnants.

One small scarred patch of skin on her shoulder

that still remembers the heat.

An old lover once traced over her scars

and asked, “Does it hurt?”

“Only when I pretend it didn’t happen.”

They were both left quiet like church.

THE BOY WHO TOUCHED FIRE

He mistook brightness for safety.

Thought if he burned first,

no one else could.

He laughed too loud in quiet rooms,

then apologized.

Forgot to finish his coffee.

Forgot to sleep.

His mind moved like weather—

impossible to hold.

They called it illness.

He called it noise.

He loved carefully,

like something already breaking.

And when the fire came,

he believed it would pass through him

like light.



TOO CLOSE TO THE LIGHT

There was a night

the music felt louder than consequence.

Windows open.

Someone laughing in the kitchen.

The air thick with the promise

of something that would not last.

You said my name

like it was already breaking.

I remember thinking

this is what alive feels like—

my pulse skipping ahead of the moment,

my hands warm for no reason.

Someone told us to slow down.

We didn’t.

The room tilted toward morning.

The floor felt soft beneath our feet.

You were brighter than sleep.

Brighter than sense.

Brighter than anything that could stay.

I stood too close to you

to see the shadow behind the light.

And when you touched my hand,

I did not move away.

THE GIRL WHO TOUCHED FIRE

She traded quiet for a blaze.

For years, she wore her silence

like a good-girl dress—

hemmed at the ankles,

buttoned to the throat.

She smiled when the room asked her to,

nodded when the hurt said “stay.”

No one saw how loud it was inside her.

How every unchecked voicemail,

every unanswered prayer

stacked like newspapers at the door—

yellowing, flammable.

How her ribs felt less like a cage

and more like kindling.

All she desired was a way out.

She ran toward the heat,

toward the thing everyone said

would ruin her.

The love that came with warning labels.

The dream that would cost too much.

Now they point at her and say,

“There goes the girl who touched fire.”