Calm Even While Burning

On a night when flames licked the sky, everyone ran, but he didn’t move an inch. He lay on the grass, listening to the distant roar of fire while gently holding a small flower in his hand. The world was burning, trees were collapsing with violent cracks, and the sky had turned into a red curtain. But there was no panic inside him. Maybe he had grown used to chaos, maybe the fire no longer frightened him. Or maybe the storms within him had once burned far hotter than anything outside, turning the wildfire into nothing more than background noise. Within that suspended moment, time seemed to stop, leaving only one thing behind: the calm gifted by indifference. Even while everything burned, his stillness was the quietest scream the world could ever hear....