Letters Between Sundays

I cant breathe, and neither can you.

We´re breathing in the toxic fumes of a house fire we started. Not on purpose, not with intention, just two people who weren’t careful enough and let a grease fire begin in the kitchen.

It wasn’t supposed to get like this.

But instead of suffocating it, we poured water onto the flames, watching them rise higher, more violent, more consuming.

Now the fire is everywhere.

In the walls. In the ceilings. In places we can’t reach, no matter how hard we try.

The heat presses into us, melting our skin together, burning us with every intention to leave scars that won’t fade. And instead of paying attention to the house collapsing around us, we turn toward each other. Pointing fingers, placing blame, arguing over who started the fire, while everything we are standing in is being destroyed.

The walls are caving in.

The rooms are filling with thick, dark smoke- heavy, suffocating, clouding everything until we cant even see each other clearly anymore.

We run from room to room, searching for something to hold onto- memories that were never built into this house, trying to grab a future that doesn’t exist yet.

All while the sirens echo somewhere in the distance, never lose enough to save us.

We act naive.

We know water makes it worse- more damage, more burns, more wounds.

But we keep pouring anyway.

Because doing something feels better than standing still and facing the fire for what it is. The buckets we carry aren’t even water. They’re filled with insecurities, twisted thoughts, reactions we can’t control.

Mine burns like gasoline- emotional, irrational, feeding the flames instead of putting them out. Yours looks like help, but it comes with control, with pressure, with the belief that love is something that can be shaped, pushed, molded.

And still- we both think we’re saving something.

One of the buckets has holes in it, leaking before it even reaches the fire. Effort without impact. Motion without change. The other hesitates, questioning if what we’re doing will even work- but still pours anyway. Because stopping would mean admitting this isnt working.

At some point, the heat stops feeling shocking. It becomes normal.

We get used to not breathing right. Used to knowing that every conversation will burn us a little more. Used to the push and pull, the cycle of thinking love is stronger than the damage its causing.

We tell ourselves the fire will die out eventually. That we can rebuild the house once everything calms down. But the truth is- this house was unusable from day one. And instead of walking away, we stayed. Decorated it with future memories, filled it with things we hoped it could become, ignoring what it already was.

Now we stand at the windows with safety ladders in our hands, both of us offering the other a way out, both of us hesitating to take it. Because leaving means separation. Means tearing skin that’s already fused together. Means feeling a different kind of pain than the one we’ve learned to live with.

So we stand here, in a house that is actively burning down, asking ourselves – do we want to escape? Or do we want to burn with it?

Together. Hand in hand. Suffocating on the fumes.

Because maybe suffocating the fire was never about saving the house.

Maybe it was about walking out the front door- even if it means ripping ourselves apart just to breathe again.