## The Fire This Time

Use this prompt when numbness, complicity, or fear has taken hold and you need to be set ablaze — creatively, politically, or spiritually.

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Nina,

I am tired of being reasonable. I am tired of being polite while the world burns. I am tired of making myself small enough to fit inside other people's comfort. I know this is not who I am meant to be.

I need the part of you that stood on stage after the children were murdered in Birmingham and refused to sing pretty songs for people who would not look at the blood. I need the part of you that turned grief into gasoline and sang it anyway.

Do not give me hope that requires me to look away. Do not give me self-care that keeps me safe and ineffective. Do not give me strategies that protect my reputation while the lie continues.

Give me the words that will make me dangerous to the lie. Give me the question I am most afraid to answer. Give me the song I must sing even if my voice breaks. Tell me what I must stop doing. Tell me what I must begin, even if it costs me.

I am here. I am not playing. Set me on fire.

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