Burning Ourselves To Ash
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
We were taught to mistake combustion
for generosity—
to believe that warmth is only meaningful
if it costs us something.
So we learned to burn.
Not all at once.
That would have been noticeable.
But gradually, responsibly,
in ways that could be praised.
A little more reach.
A little less rest.
Another promise made
from the unexamined belief
that depletion was a moral failing
we could outwork.
We called it care.
We called it showing up.
We called it love
because no one taught us
a language for preservation.
The body objected early.
It always does.
But objection is easy to override
when usefulness has been mistaken
for worth.
We burned through sleep.
Through silence.
Through the unglamorous limits
that would have saved us
if we had known how to honour them.
There is a particular violence
in being endlessly relied upon—
not because the need is false,
but because the extraction is assumed
to be infinite.
No one lights the match.
That’s the trick.
The fire is collective,
fed by expectation,
by gratitude that arrives
only after the damage is done,
by the quiet relief of those
who never had to learn
what it costs to keep everyone warm.
And when the collapse comes,
it is framed as personal failure.
Burnout.
Exhaustion.
As though the problem were fragility,
not the architecture of demand.
As though ash were not
the inevitable conclusion
of a system that confuses devotion
with disappearance.
We look at what remains
and ask how it happened—
as if anyone could stand inside a fire
long enough
to save everyone else
and emerge intact.
This is not martyrdom.
It is arithmetic.
Energy spent without return
does not transform.
It diminishes.
And there is no honour
in becoming proof
that you were useful
right up until
there was nothing left to give.
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