I started to write when I was a teenager.

I know, I know, teen angst, messy hormones, whatever you want to call it, typical. And my first efforts were a bit miserable. Like anyone's first efforts. Writing poetry, like writing prose, or like... well, like any art, takes work, practice, study, understanding. A million hours making music in my mind, with morsels and mouthfuls of metaphors as melodies. But I didn't take well to growing up, not just the additional adult responsibility (because who likes that?) but also the various changes going through my world.

One of the big turning points, when I realized that the words I was smashing into doodles and scratches in the corners of pages could actually relieve some of the pressure on me, was when I was thirteen. Home alone for the weekend, no big plans, no parties, showering one morning, and my bleeding started, and I was there in the shower, alone in the house, blood mixed with water running down my leg, and something inside me just... broke. I don't know what it was, I don't know why, but something about that moment just made me cry and thrash and scream. There may have been something going on in my personal life—fuck, there was definitely something going on in my personal life, there always was—that pushed me to that point, but I don't remember what it is, I just remember my period being the straw that broke the camel's back and sent me into howls of fury. And after a while, I cleaned up, got myself dry, put on a bathrobe and headed to my room and just started to write. Not just doodle, not just scrape together a few words for an assignment or a lust verse for a guy I was chasing, but actual, serious (and at that time, pretty miserable) poetry. And I—

I dreamed of it, that morning, after crashing into bed. Not the writing, but all that led up to it.

Staring at myself in the mirror, screaming out anger. This wasn't the way life was supposed to work. I was supposed to have a functional, supportive family. I was supposed to be a normal kid. I wasn't supposed to be alone in a house at thirteen bleeding on the bathroom tile while everyone in my family slowly grew to hate each other more and more. I was supposed to still be able to ignore it like I could when I was seven, or nine, or even when I was an infant and didn't know anything else.

And in the dream, I looked into the mirror, and I saw myself as I was then almost a decade after that moment, and behind me in the reflection was fire.

I turned. An ordinary bathroom was all around me. But in the mirror.

Hell.

Like the woman had talked about in Sunday school, a few years back.

Flames of torment roiled and roared and I couldn't look away. I couldn't move, paralyzed by the ever-approaching, ever-encroaching heat from behind the glass. Forcing myself to act, I grabbed the heavy granite soap dish my mother had bought that didn't match any of the decor and, straining against the binding the dream had placed on me, threw it into the glass, shattering it into dust in a way that it would never shatter in reality.

Flames leapt from the twinkling shards, and my feet became unstuck, and I ran. I felt the heat on my bare back as I ran out of the house and into the street.

The reflective, glittering glass itself was chasing me, full of fire. A shining, blazing tornado of voices propelling my naked form down the street into the night. I could hear myself, as a child. I could hear neighbours, friends, family, people that if I had still been thirteen I wouldn't have heard yet. They were joyful, they were dreadful, frightening, uplifting, some were mine from when I was young, some were I think mine but odd, distorted, distant.

Part of me longed to stop running, to let the cutting glass and the burning flame overtake me, just to see what I would see inside that tormenting reflection. Would I see Hell in that glowing column? But I couldn't. I couldn't keep myself from instinctually fleeing, putting distance between me and the deadly flare.

And again, I took off. Spread my arms, spread my wings, and like an angel in a Renaissance painting, took to the sky, leaving the ground behind as the clattering and tinkling of the shards rattled behind me, and from them, from every voice inside them, no two alike in tone or speed or voice, not in harmony but in a rattling, clashing, percussive noise, all of those voices said those fatal words:

"We cannot call one such as you."

And Manu was there, wrapping my terrified, naked form in comforting warmth, carrying me up higher than I'd ever been, so far up I couldn't breathe, so I found I didn't have to, and the cold of space chased awake the fire and the stars were close, so close, and together, away from the flame, among the stars so near I could breathe on them and they would flicker and dance like candle-flames, so calm I could move them from their courses just by thinking, I could spread ripples in whatever surface of space they rested in and waves and sworls would pass through them in an impossible seascape, and there, in space, in nowhere and in everywhere, we kissed, and we kissed, and the flame of terror turned to the flame of passion, and our embrace draw the stars closer, spying curiously to see what these two living things might be doing in the dead cold blackness, and the answer swimming in my vision and in my mind could only be 'creating more stars' as our embrace turned carnal and I drew him deep, deeper inside me than we were in space and all that was aching within me felt his calming fire and the dream reached brilliant and beyond-brilliant consummation as the light of the cosmos responded to my cries and glowed and shone and oh God it was all too wonderful, too amazing, and the light became blinding, and—

I realized I was staring at the sun—

I realized I had just cried out in orgasm—

—at full volume—

—Multiple times—

—In my room—

—With the thin walls—

—And likely a dorm full of people lounging around on a Sunday afternoon—

The flame from the page on my desk looked up at me almost menacingly as I rolled to a sitting position, terror exchanged for passion exchanged for terror again, my whole body flush with sex and loss and embarrassment. I wondered if maybe no one had heard, but judging by the hoarseness of my throat I suspect that the entire second floor, if not the entire building, was aware that something had just happened.

Something momentous. Something monumental.

I composed myself, sitting there, trying to calm down, trying to resist the urge that said well, you've already alerted everyone, why not go a second time? and I stood up, and made my way to the door, and I turned the knob and pulled it open just a crack before shutting it and realizing that I was still naked, I hadn't dressed for bed.

It wouldn't be the first time I'd run the halls bare-assed. An absent-minded (and very stoned) colleague had grabbed my towel along with hers in my second year, before I had a proper robe, and, well... What else was there to do? Fortunately, it was late enough that I didn't meet anyone, sprinting dripping-wet to my dorm room. I had to lay down on top of the blankets and then toss them over the radiator the next morning to dry them, but everything was pretty well alright. My towel showed up that afternoon, and all was forgiven.

Instead, I grabbed for my phone. No new messages. It was half past three, which meant that I'd got about a solid eight hours, and there was a tiny, minuscule chance that everyone was out and that nobody had heard what just happened.

Which I allowed myself to believe for about five seconds, until there was a knock at the door. "Hey?"

Kammy.

"Yeah?" I called back.

"You okay? I saw the door almost open."

"Uh huh, yeah, I'm fine," I lied.

"Another nightmare?"

There was no mockery in her voice. Maybe I didn't sound like I was—

"It sounded like this one might have been a little more fun."

Fuck.

"Yeah," I replied. "Just a dream, nothing to worry about."

I was redder than borscht.

"You need anything?"

"Nah, thanks," I answered. "Just gonna stay here and try and get a little rest before dinner. I had a rough night."

"'Kay, see you then."

"Yup."

Silence. My heart pounding in my ears like a bass drum, but otherwise? Silence.

I was holding my breath.

I stopped holding my breath.

I stopped holding my breath mostly so that there was some other sound in my head than my heartbeat.

But also because I wanted oxygen.

I looked on my desk.

Suddenly I could hear the flames and the voices and the tinkling of broken glass.

I grabbed a pencil and flipped to an open page and started drawing. For the first time in a long time, in years, I set myself to capturing an image, not a moment or a feeling. I didn't want to create an image meant to remind me of an instant of my life so I could write poetry about it later, I just wanted to draw what I had seen in my dream.

I wasn't a visual artist. It didn't come out great. Still, over the course of some time, I got a rough sketch of the fire and the glass storm beneath, and the stars dancing above. I didn't even bother to try putting myself into the page, just left a vague human-shaped blob being held by another vague human-shaped blob in the middle of the page. It wasn't a thing of beauty, but it was in my sketchbook now. And I felt... somewhat better. It was an abstract expression, but it was still something. Besides, I was used to making sense of my abstract expressions.

And anyway, I didn't make the drawing for anyone but myself. It was just for a record, not for further inspiration.

There was another knock on the door.

"Yeah?" I called.

"You awake?" It was Kammy again.

"Yep."

"You coming to dinner?"

"Uh huh."

"We're going in five."

"Awesome."

"Meet you in the lounge?"

"Yup."

I got up and stretched my arms and popped my knuckles. I was still naked. I needed to remedy that. So I dressed as I usually did, realizing that I had started dressing like that after that weekend, the one I had dreamed of.

A moment of hesitation. A familiar push against my heart.

I took a breath, closed my eyes, and let the words come.
Reflection showing me a me I am no more
And blasting forth with searing flame
To temper now with shattered shards and make me soar
While cutting me with bloodied blame

I had my phone in hand as I stepped out into the lounge, putting the verse next to the one I'd written after my previous nightmare. I wondered at that.

"Whatcha doin'?" Regina asked from across the room.

"Hm? Oh, just writing," I replied. "An idea came to me, I just wanted to make sure I jotted it down."

"Oh nice, are we gonna get to hear it?"

I shrugged. "Maybe when it's done."

"Sure! I get that. If something's important you wanna wait until it's just right, yeah?"

"Gotta let the cake rise, or whatever it is."

Regina laughed as the elevator door opened. Kammy, Rita, and Soleil emerged, looking oddly like two parents and a child. Definitely a weird thought. "Time for dinner?" Rita asked.

"Yeah, let's go!" Regina said, turning towards the stairs, and I realized that the four of them decided to take the long way down so they could walk with me, and that for some reason really warmed my heart.

The chatter as we walked down the stairs and into the street was similarly supportive. For the moment, things felt... normal. In proper order. Almost enough to make me forget that two hours before I'd cum loudly enough to alert everyone in the building that I was having the wettest of dreams.

The caf wasn't all that busy; we had beaten the Sunday evening rush. We got into line behind one other person.

"You got a fun poem about chicken fingers?" Regina asked me, and the five of us laughed.

"Nothing I'd want to speak here," I replied, my tone lighter than I felt.

"What do you write about, that you don't share?" Kammy asked, almost rhetorically.

Soleil answered for me. "I bet everything," she said, and there was a touch of awe in her accented voice. "Like I would think that there isn't really anything you don't write about? But some of it must feel, I dunno, boring or something? Like I don't sing a lot of songs about like, I dunno, chicken fingers I guess too? It seems like a boring subject."

"Ah, well, the idea with a boring subject is to find something interesting to say about it," I said in reply.

"Okay, then," Regina said, a challenge in her voice. "You give me a poem about chicken fingers, french fries, and barbecue sauce, and I'll buy your dinner."

The other three laughed again, but Regina and I didn't. I raised an eyebrow, and she responded in kind.

"You're on," I said. "I'll give you your poem when we get to the table. If you don't like it, I'll buy your dinner next time."

"Deal."

Rita's look was unreadable, but there was a caution in there that I didn't quite understand. At least, I didn't quite understand it until I thought about it.

Don't make me stop you again, her eyes said, and I solemnly nodded.

Soleil brushed past me to reach something in the dairy fridge, and I felt an almost electric spark. She didn't seem to notice. In fact, she, Kammy, and Regina were all chatting at that point, leaving Regina and me bringing up the rear.

I kept my voice low. "Are you about to tell me that I shouldn't abuse my power like this or something?"

She scoffed. "No, not hardly. Art is meant for all kinds of things, right? If anything, I'm curious to see what you'll do, and how. We make stuff to amuse ourselves all the time, there's no harm in it."

"So why am I all keyed up, then?"

Rita sighed. "You're aware of what a poem can do. You're... I dunno, it's like you're carrying around enough gunpowder to blow up a building, but you could still just throw a little on a fire to make some sparks." We moved towards the register, various objects on our trays. "This is why I'm not a poet."

"I don't have to turn on the firehose, I can just have a sip from the fountain?"

"Good enough."

Regina was as good as her word and paid for my food. I didn't take advantage and get more than I normally did, just taking a main course, two sides, and dessert: Chicken fingers (the special of the day), fries and a garden salad, and a solid chocolate cake slab they called a brownie. If nothing else, I figured that I didn't want her to turn around and try to take advantage of me when I bought her supper in return, not that she would, but that was even more of a reason not to try to cheat.

We all brought our food to a round table with eight chairs. I sat between Kammy and Rita, with Regina on Kammy's left and Soleil on Rita's right. Regina looked over at me, and the other three turned to face me in anticipation.

"Okay. Here goes."

Despite the fact that it was Regina that issued the challenge, I was most aware of Rita's eyes on me.

I picked up a dry, breaded, pan-fried morsel from my plate, held it up in front of me, inhaled the basic spice of it. It was truly nothing special; nicely bland enough not to offend anyone.
You travel from plate to palate
Presenting no challenge
Demanding no attention
The dry dusty remnant of a lost and helpless bird
Lost and helpless now yourself
Sustaining the body
And not the soul
Hardly deserving the measure of a poetic word
My plate is no less without you
Uncalled and undemanded
Direct, not underhanded
Seared and sealed in breadcrumb, parsley, oil,
A saltless vessel for a sauce
Freeing your flavour
Texture to savour
Now suddenly suitable show of line-cook's toil

I dipped the chicken finger in the honey-mustard sauce I'd taken, and bit the end off, and felt the explosion of fire and flavour I had only been half expecting. Regina followed suit and let out a loud, satisfied hum.

"Wow, I don't think the chicken's ever been so good," she said after swallowing.

Soliel took a bite next, then made a face. "I don't really know..."

Rita held out her own little bowl of barbecue sauce, and Soleil hesitated before trying it. Her reaction to her second bite was almost the complete opposite, much more like Regina's.

And then we were all eating. None of us took a single bite if it hadn't been dipped in some sort of topping.

As I was about halfway done my second chicken finger, I caught Rita's eyes. There was only a little fire there—enough to warm, not to threaten—and her expression seemed to imply that I'd done well. Or at least that I'd accomplished my goal. Frustratingly, I realized that I didn't know if that meant I was getting closer to being called or not.

I had too many goals, and not enough information to achieve them. Welcome to life, I suppose.

I brought myself back to the table. "I'll cover you next time, Regina."

"Huh? What? No!" She swallowed the french fry she was eating. "I asked for a poem, you gave me a poem. We're square."

Kammy snickered. "You'll be singing for your supper soon. You maybe didn't need to pay for your meal card this year."

"Hah!" I laughed. "No one needs to hear me sing."

"But we would listen to you recite," Soleil said. "I love hearing your fire."

The odd wording went by apparently unnoticed by everyone who wasn't me.

"Besides," Regina said, "My momma taught me that we don't make people work for free, and that goes double for people that make stuff we like."

"I like your mom's philosophy," Rita replied.

I nodded. "I think most artists would."

"Some hesitation there?" Regina asked.

"Yeah... uh, I mean, I know it's kinda uncouth to talk about money..." I shifted in my seat a bit uncomfortably. "So my parents are divorced about... six, seven years ago? And they both have tried really hard to win my love the whole time, and..." I shrugged. "Too little, too late? Doesn't matter. They're both funding my education in competition with each other. Plus a few scholarships, and—"

Regina lifted a hand, cutting me off. "Got it, you feel guilty. And yeah, I know we don't talk about money, but you don't have to worry about me 'kay?" She smiled at me. "Just trust me, I wanna do this, and I can do this, and I'm gonna do this."

Soleil laughed. "Nice to know that I am surrounded by all these comfortable rich people who can support my future acting career!"

We all joined her laughter, which seemed to break the tension some.

"I'm only comfortable until I graduate," I said.

Kammy grinned. "I'll be looking for a job in January, probably. Again. When I have a little more room in the schedule."

"Anyway, you know I've got you, right?" Rita said to Soleil with a wink.

Soleil flushed and smiled, which made me very curious. She tried to hide her expression behind another bite of her food. She was younger than me by four years, but in that moment she looked very childlike.

The conversation understandably moved away from money and family and into other things, but I admit I stopped paying all that much attention. Instead I was thinking back to Soleil's earlier statement. I love hearing your fire. Every time I replayed that soft utterance in my head, I could feel it building, the urge to speak, to write, to make ... something happen. Anything.

Dinner finished before I could, or at least before I did, and almost before I knew it we were heading back to Barker. Kammy, Regina, and Soleil were walking in front, having a lively chat, leaving me and Rita a step behind.

I slowed a bit, and Rita did the same.

"What did I do right?" I asked.

She shrugged. "It really depends on—"

"No, please, don't. Just... Just tell me something. Something real."

We stopped walking, then. "What real do you think I can tell you?" she said.

I threw up my hands.

"Exactly."

"You're infuriating, you know?" I said.

She took my hand, comfortingly. "Yeah. I know. It's okay. And trust your local seer: it's better you do this yourself."

There was something important about that grip, and the squeeze that followed.

"Though... I could answer a question," she continued. She seemed reluctant, maybe a little embarrassed. "If you want to know."

"Yeah," I said, my desperation a little cowed by her emotion. "Sure. Anything." It was hard to be upset with her when her effort to navigate some sort of ethical minefield was showing.

"You were wondering why I wasn't attracted to you."

"I..." I swallowed, thinking back.

"Okay, so I don't make a habit of chasing after girls who aren't interested in me, but... Well, let me just say, if you want it, it'll happen. And if you don't, I'm not going to waste my energy bothering you, you know?"

The others had disappeared into the dorm, and Rita let my hand go and started walking again. "Have fun tonight with Manu," she said.

I just stood there a moment, not sure what to say or to do, even with no one around. Eventually I just headed to my room and got ready for a night out.