There's something about staring into flames.
Just sitting and gazing at some fire doing its wild dance, burning, warming me at the same time. The way it switches off my mind is addicting; it lets me forget that I even exist. Only me and the fire. There's something primordial in it — knowing my ancestors were just as hypnotised as I am, just as connected to the moment as I am to them. Suddenly I'm not me, not my ego, just energy and light in this body, experiencing life as I should. In the now. As god, or the universe, planned it.
And then there's the fire that heated up the key to my heart.
It's a dream I just had — just one of the million. I often dream about my childhood home, where I grew up and spent twenty-two years of my life. In this particular dream I was there yet again, perfect details as always, back in that small furnace room we had — talking about post-communist small-town Hungary in the nineties. I used to sit there in that messy, crowded badly-lit shed, just me and my dog, feeding the fire that kept the house warm during harsh winters. Typical introverted kid, sitting in her oversized winter jacket she inherited from her dad, just sitting for hours on end, watching the fire in the furnace, talking to her dog and loving the silence.
But in this one-in-a-million dream, I had a decorative metal key in my hand, the top half shaped like a heart. I placed the key on the furnace and it heated up until the heart flew off, right at me, and cut my leg. A shallow, surface-level wound from a hot object. But the metaphor is something I couldn't have come up with even if I tried too hard, considering the state of my love life.
There's the key to my heart — I'm just guessing here. There's the heat, and then the forging, the transformation. And then there's rupture. Self-inflicted collateral damage, because that's what I'm good at. I'm prone to pain that is caused by love; used to it by now. I fire myself up to the point where I burn and bleed, and I don't just stare into flames but outright stick my hands in… and then I'm inclined to be surprised that it burned me. That's what always happened, each time, up until now. No exception. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.
And maybe I'm there, the body — but maybe I'm also the key, and also the flame. But then, so were you. So are you. My twin flame. I met you and it burned me, so bad, that I had no other choice but to burn and bleed to absolute transformation. Through fire. Sulphur and mercury, gold and silver melted and forged, united within me — and I became. And isn't it funny: modern alchemy in a small London flat in 2026…
My twin flame, we really did burn so bright. Too bright, too fast. It destroyed us. Well — it definitely destroyed me.
And I realised I'm good at realising things in retrospect; the irony of it. Just as I was burning a letter I wrote you, yet again — since I still have a lot to say to you — I was watching the love-hate letter burn, and it hit me: peace. The kind that was my exact intention with that ritual. Peace, because there's no point thinking about the whys, and the hows, and the "what was the point?"
Why twin-flame - because the fire will eventually burn itself out and die down, and that's a relief, because I don't want to guard it forever. The leftover embers are hot enough to keep me warm — for now, for evermore. Hot enough to heat up heart-shaped keys until they burn and cut me. But I don't think I want that anymore either. I don't want to burn too bright, too fast. I don't want fire to burn out too quickly. I want to sit by and watch flames dance comfortably, peacefully, happily, with purpose — to keep me safe and warm just enough, just like the late evening summer sun.
You revived some fire in me that had been sleeping for a while, and now the embers are glowing in the dark of the night as I'm sending off the ashes of my once-love-letter with the July wind. Warm enough wind — the wind of fate. Warm enough fire inside me to keep me alive. Peace after the cut. No blood in sight.
