Condolences of an Arsonist

You came back after the fire
with soot on your hands
and sorrow in your mouth,
looking over what remained
as though you had arrived
just after the sirens.

You said you were sorry
the house was gone.

Sorry for the photographs
curled black at the edges,
for the rooms reduced to outlines,
for the roof collapsed
into everything
we once kept beneath it.

You stood beside me in the ashes
and mourned beautifully.

Look what happened to us.

Us.

Such a small word
to hide a match inside.

You spoke about the dry season,
how brittle the walls had become,
how long the heat had been building,
how both of us had left things
lying around
that could burn.

You told me
you never wanted this.

I believe you.

That is what makes it worse.

Because I think you are sorry
the house burned down.

I think watching me
dig barehanded through the wreckage
actually hurts you.

I think you miss the rooms too.

I think you can grieve
every single thing you destroyed
and still never once
take responsibility
for destroying it.

Because grief is not confession.

Remorse is not ownership.

And condolences
are not accountability
when they come
from the arsonist.

You keep apologizing
for the fire
as though fire were weather.

As though it descended
without hands.

As though the match
struck itself.

You say,

We hurt each other.

and somewhere inside that sentence
your hand disappears.

Things got out of control.

and suddenly the flame
has no beginning.

We both made mistakes.

and now I am standing trial
beside you
for the crime
I woke up inside.

Yes,

I broke things
trying to get out.

I shattered windows.

I kicked through doors.

I screamed things
into burning rooms
that I wish
I could drag back
out of the smoke.

Those are mine.

Every shard.

Every splinter.

Every word.

I have named them
without calling them ours.

I have apologized for them
without making you responsible
for my hands.

But do not point
to the blood on my palms
and call it evidence
that we started the fire together.

Do not hold up
the window I shattered escaping
beside the match you struck
and call that balance.

Do not confuse
what I did
after I smelled smoke
with what you did
while I was still sleeping.

You had choices
before there was a fire.

I had choices
inside one.

We are responsible
for both.

They are not
the same thing.

And I am tired
of watching you sweep them
into the same pile of ash
because equality
is easier to carry
than ownership.

I do not need you
to apologize for the ashes.

I know they are ashes.

I do not need you
to tell me how terrible it is
that there is nowhere left
for either of us to live.

I do not need condolences
from the person
who knows where the match came from.

I need you to understand
that being sorry
for what your choices caused
is not the same
as being accountable
for choosing them.

Maybe someday
you will stop telling me
how sorry you are
for what happened to us

and tell me instead
what you did to me.

Maybe someday
you will say I
and leave it there.

No but.

No we.

No weather report
about how dry the house had gotten.

No inventory
of the windows I broke
trying to survive it.

Just:

I struck the match.

And maybe then
your apology
will finally belong to you.

Until then,

keep your condolences.

I survived the fire.

I will not carry
the arsonist
out of it too.