The Dragon’s Hearth: A Trilogy of Fire
- The Autistic Lens
- Sep 29
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 30
Some poems arrive as fragments, but others arrive as seasons.
This one came in three. At the last section, is a blog post separate but connected, showing what love means to me beyond the fire and storm.
The first season was longing — To Be Wanted Back.
It was the porch light, the lighthouse, the bus seat left open. It was me saying: here is what wanting me looks like, here is what love should look like in return. It was hunger and grief without a funeral. The ache of being the one who always reaches.
The second season was cost — Ashes and Light.
That poem was written from blistered hands, from the nights when love feels less like oxygen and more like a furnace you can’t step away from. I admitted the hatred that grows in me for this heart that won’t stop burning, even when it sears me down to ash. It wasn’t a redemption story. It wasn’t triumph. It was a scarred truth: the fire keeps burning, even when I wish it wouldn’t.
And now the final season — embodiment — The Dragon’s Hearth.
This is the reveal. The keeper of the fire, the one who tended the porch light, the one who held open the cave, is dragon. Not separate from me, not a metaphor standing off to the side — but marrow and breath. I am dragonfire and scars, wings torn but still opening. I am the hearth that refuses to go dark. And if you come in from the storm, the fire will be waiting.
This trilogy isn’t about becoming invincible. It’s about telling the truth: that love is both infinite gift and infinite wound, that tending the fire costs me, and that I still choose it. Even when I want to bury the embers, the chest glows anyway. Even when I long for silence, the flame flickers on.
I end not in despair, not in triumph, but in glow:
embers breathing, the cave open, the dragon tending the hearth.
If these poems are about the seasons of fire, then my blog entry The Myth of "The One" is the backdrop sky they burn against. That piece was me untangling the lie of “The One,” learning that love is less about perfection and more about persistence, presence, and choice. Where the poems trace the cost of tending the flame, The Myth of "The One" reminds me that the fire isn’t meant for just one person — it’s a hearth with space for many to sit beside it, and a greater look into what love is like for me when the storm isn't raging, and the fire welcomes you in.
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