A Kingdom in Flames is a visceral poem about chronic illness, invisible pain, and the relentless war beneath the skin. Through fire, rebellion, and transformation, it explores resilience, identity, and the refusal to surrender one's inner sovereignty. An unapologetic expression of defiance against the body’s unpredictability and the world's expectations.
Pain and I have shared a blood-red throne, its language carved beneath my bones. I know the hush before the heavens split, the serpent’s coil, the fuse, the bit, the dark that follows it.
It comes unbidden, crowned in spite, a black sun swallowing the light. I’ve watched the seasons trade their names, each fragile peace consumed by flames.
Denial wore silk; grief came dressed in rain. Hope bartered silver for a kingdom of pain. Acceptance arrived with no laurel, no key, just the ashes of all I thought I’d be.
Let the floorboards buckle, foundations groan. I’ve built my resolve from splinter and stone. The body revolts, the nerves ignite, while daylight burns at the edges of night.
Pills like small planets orbit the hours; lightning nests in the nerves’ dark towers. The bed becomes a country without a shore, the emergency room, another revolving door.
And still, the world parades its borrowed truth, its polished wisdom, its gospel of proof. I’ll tear the velvet from its iron cage and feed its rules to the furnace of rage.
Who I was lies folded in yesterday’s skin. The old architecture could not hold me in. Age slowed the reckoning; time took its toll. What emerged was no cure, but a harder soul.
Then came the war no flag could name, no trumpet announced, no treaty could tame. A silent invasion, a private coup; something was taken before I knew.
The burning has devoured the luxury of doubt; there’s no tender silence to hide behind now. Sleeplessness forged me a merciless blade; whatever was tender has learned to evade.
Beneath my feet, the whole world tilts; the ground gives way, the old order wilts. The horizon retreats. Still, the road runs on. I have outlasted the promise of dawn.
It will get better. A paper-thin prayer, a match struck in a hurricane’s glare. Keep your borrowed prophecies, your sugar-coated lies; I have watched too many certainties vaporize.
I will not curate my ruin for your gaze, nor make my defiance palatable, praised. If my boundaries scorch the hands that reach, let the flames say what I will not teach.
Call me ruthless. Call me changed. I have no interest in being rearranged to fit the dimensions of your peace of mind. I am not the wreckage you expected to find.
Let the heavens crack; let the old gods fall. I owe no allegiance to the court of them all. No crown to inherit, no saviour in sight, just a will like a blade and a pulse full of fight.
I am no phoenix begging the sky for rebirth. I am the wildfire reclaiming the earth. Let the unseen war rage beneath my skin, it may have breached the gates. It will not own the kingdom within.
The image above is one of one of my artworks, a fluid acrylics painting from my series Under My Skin.
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@2026 Lavi Picu aka Lyme Poet. All rights reserved.