There’s something primal about burning.
Feels sacred.
Like maybe the smoke knows what to do with the shit you can’t carry.

I’ve burned one on the banks of the muddy Mississippi
not to feel better, just to feel something.
More of a bribe, or a gamble.
That maybe the water would take what the liar wouldn’t.

But ash floats.

I watched it twist downstream like ghost scrawling,
carrying words to the bottom feeders.
The priests of the riverbed.
Up from the muck.

I think about him and it sometimes.
The way his drunk snoring filled a room like a machine running out of gas.
He’d knock back a case, slump into the loveseat,
and disappear under the glow of the TV
mouth open, face down, one boot still on.
You could fire a gun in that room, and he wouldn’t wake up.
Often proven, never verified.

One night, my friend Nate came over.
First time meeting Tracy.
We walk in, and Nate just froze.
Pointed at the lump on the recliner and asked,
“Is he alright?”

I laughed.
“Yeah. He’s like that every night.”

But now I wonder what I should’ve said.
What I should’ve done.
Maybe we should’ve dragged his ass back to the bar,
or offered the help he obviously needed
before he drank himself into another blackout.

I didn’t do any of that.

I just wrote about it.
Over and over for years.
And eventually, I burned it.

Burned the pages where I said I hated him.
Burned the ones where I admitted I didn’t.
Burned the version where I tried to make it funny.
Burned the one where It couldn’t be.

There’s a reason people destroy what they create.
Not because it means nothing
but because it means too much.

A journal to me, is a sacred kind of trash.
It’s where you can be most raw, most contradictory, most unforgivable, most honest.
It’s the part of you that doesn’t ask to be liked.
Just to be let out.

We destroy them because we think no one should see us that clearly.
Not even ourselves.

But what if the world needs that kind of clarity?
What if the shame is the offering?
What if the words that won’t sink
are the ones worth holding on to?

This is a kind of journal.
Just louder. Rougher.
More gamble than glory.
It’s the burnt pages turned creative fuel.
That trash worn like armor.
The unspoken thoughts pinned to a gallery wall
like a confession booth, or changing room with no curtain.

That’s where this lives,
in the liminal space between shame and witness.
Between what you tried to burn
and what you still carry.

To turn a private wreckage into something public,
beautiful,
and unignitable.

I make art not because I’m clean,
but because I’m haunted.

So go ahead.
Burn your journals.
Take a gamble.
Tell the river.

The catfish aren’t that far from home.