Black Flame Gospel

They tried to name her once. Tied bows to her fists. Sewed good behavior into the seams of her dresses. Told her to hush, to sit, to smile smaller.

She burned it all before seventeen.

Now she moves like a rumor, passing through towns with boarded windows and fading parades. Her jacket smells like gasoline and old storms. Her laugh breaks stained glass. Wherever she lands, something cracks.

She doesn’t lead. Doesn’t follow. Just leaves doors open behind her and dares the lost to step through.

In Coldwater, she carved a sermon into the school desk with a house key. In Heaven’s Bluff, she swapped the choir’s sheet music for pirate shanties and grinned while they sang every note.

She collects strays and sparks. Sings lullabies like threats. Once told a pastor, “I’ve met your god, and she was starving.”

When the town council tried to lock her out, they found their keys melted into slag. No sign of her, just a line scrawled in ash across the welcome sign:

I am not your lesson.

And when the fires start, no one knows if she lit them—

only that the air tastes freer when she’s gone.