The Kindling

Kindling
by Autumn Waites
It started with a matchbook.
Taped to the back of a library book.
Inside: two words.
Still here.
From the ashes of Ivy and Bee’s legacy comes a new story – not of the ones who lit the first flame, but the ones who kept it burning.
A journal left open on a windowsill.
A tattoo inked where the scars once were.
A zine passed between strangers.
A candle lit not in grief, but in defiance.
These are the stories of the ones who stayed.
The ones who almost gave up.
The ones who wrote their survival in ink, in paint, in silence – and left it behind for someone else to find.
Kindling is a mosaic of healing, memory, and connection – a love letter to grief, to creativity, and to the quiet, radical act of staying.
If you’re holding this, maybe it was meant for you.