You Know What You Are Getting Into Bed With
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
You don’t get to claim surprise.
Not now.
Not after the smoke.
You knew the temperature of that room.
The volatility.
The way sanity thinned
the longer you stayed.
You knew what you were aligning with—
the ones who smile like contracts
and speak like loopholes.
The ones who don’t build,
only extract.
Something was taken.
Not misplaced.
Not misunderstood.
Taken—
with intention,
with appetite,
with the quiet confidence of people
who believe consequence is for other lives.
And you stood there,
watching the math work itself out,
mistaking mutual assured destruction
for protection.
But here is the truth you keep avoiding:
fire is not symmetrical.
Because when fire burns,
it does not fall alone—
it drags the world with it
just to feel the heat obey.
Fire does not fear ruin.
Fire romanticizes it.
Power, to fire,
has never been about survival—
it has been about control.
About ruling something,
anything,
even if all that’s left
is ash clinging to your hands.
Fire would crown itself queen
of the wreckage,
declare victory over silence,
and call it legacy.
Even if it is ash too.
Especially then.
You think proximity saves you.
That loyalty will be rewarded.
That standing close enough to the fire
means it won’t touch you.
But fire does not make exceptions
for accomplices.
And when the reckoning comes—
not if,
when—
there will be no clean exits.
No plausible distance.
No version where you are untouched
by what you helped sustain.
You knew who you were getting into bed with.
You knew the instability.
The hunger.
The willingness to scorch
anything that resisted ownership.
And still—
you climbed in,
closed your eyes,
and told yourself
the flames were someone else’s problem.
History does not forget
that kind of choice.
Ash remembers everything.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
