What the Heat Didn’t Burn

July reminds me of what I almost forgot.

Memory doesn’t knock gently. It breaks the door you forgot you locked.

You don’t always remember because you're ready. You remember because something inside you finally stops pretending.

I remember the streetlight dimming— my bones whispering, go now. I remember a grief so thick it brought me to my knees— and something steady pressing my shoulder. Gone before I could thank it. Still felt.

I remember what they said I imagined. I learned not to argue with truth just because it comes quietly.

These memories weren’t permission. They were reclamation.

And I’m done staying hidden beneath someone else’s forgetting.

When the memories came, Elowen wasn’t surprised. She knew they’d come. She called on them.

“You have to remember. To be yourself again. To become who you’re meant to be, you must remember how you came to be.”

I didn’t hold my breath—no, not this time. I breathed through the memories. I let my body feel again: the pain, the sorrow, the anguish, the relief. All of it.

My ribs didn’t collapse. They opened.

The streetlight. The hand on my shoulder. They weren’t witnesses. They were sentinels.

That memory came roaring. And Elowen said, “Finally.”

She reminds me not to be scared. To let loose. To stop worrying about what others might say or think.

To finally turn inward— toward my healing, my memory, my pain.

“To grow, to become more, you must accept and care for yourself,” she said. “Not as a task. As a devotion.”

And when I asked if it was selfish, she smiled.

“It’s sacred,” she said.

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