How to Build a Country That Won’t Burn

Filed Under: flame retardant, CAUTION—FLAMMABLE, evacuation protocol prevention (stop, drop, & scroll)

How to Build a Country That Won’t Burn

(Poetic Edition)

First,
you have to admit the smoke is real.
No metaphors.
No “just the weather.”
Call it by its name
before the name is outlawed.

Then,
gather what cannot be stolen:
your memory,
your mercy,
the stubborn seed of hope
that refuses to die in drought.

Build the walls from empathy—
mortar mixed with the stories
that made you ache
for people you’ve never met.
Frame it with dissent—
scaffolding that sways in the wind
but never snaps to the will of one man.

Lay the floors with truth—
so no matter how far you run,
you’ll always hear it beneath your feet.

Do not seal the windows.
Let in the arguments,
the music,
the clatter of neighbors
who love differently,
pray differently,
vote differently—
but show up
when the sirens call for hands.

Leave firebreaks in the law
and in your own heart.
Spaces where no match can leap,
where no spark can cross
without meeting a flood.

And keep water by the door.
This is not fear—
this is the quiet kind of love
that waits without sleeping.

Because a country is not just borders
and laws and leaders;
it is the shared vow
to keep building
even when the wind tastes like ash,
even when the last blueprint burns.

We build
so the next child will not grow up
learning the sound of collapse
before the sound of laughter.

We build
because there is still time—
but not much.

Until the match is out of reach,

—Rebecca M. Bell

The Bell Rings 🔔

www.rmbellwrites.com

Filed Under: flame retardant, CAUTION—FLAMMABLE, evacuation protocol prevention (stop, drop, & scroll)