Alex and Claire | Fuel for the Wrong Fire

TEXT THREAD – 7:56 AM

Alex:
Coffee #2 and counting. Forecast looks clearer when you caffeinate the optimism.

Claire:
Or blur it. Depends which fire you’re feeding.

Alex:
Fire keeps people warm.

Claire:
So does overexertion — for about five minutes. Then you’re ash and paperwork.

Alex:
You make burnout sound poetic.

Claire:
Poetic? No. Predictable, maybe. The body has better boundaries than the mind; it just barges in to file the complaint.

EMAIL – 9:42 PM
Subject: fuel

Alex:
I’ve been thinking about your “depends which fire you’re feeding.”
Honestly, half the time I can’t tell. Everyone keeps saying “love what you do” — so I keep doing only to find out the loving part disappears.
I used to think tiredness was proof of devotion.
Maybe that’s the trap: mistaking depletion for purpose.

Anyway, thanks for answering the panicked texts.
I owe you one.

– A

Claire → Alex
Re: fuel

Alex —

You don’t owe me anything. You just need a new metric.
Exhaustion isn’t a virtue; it’s feedback.

There’s a kind of excess that looks like devotion until it burns through what it was meant to serve.
I learned that later than I care to admit.

Try this: before you add something to your plate, ask who actually benefits when I’m empty? Or who loses out?
If the answer is pride, not people, it’s the wrong fire.

C

TEXT – Next Morning

Alex:
“Wrong fire.” You should trademark that.

Claire:
No need. Everyone’s tried it; few of us remember when to stop adding wood.

Alex:
Hard to know the line between passion and pride.

Claire:
It’s usually the moment you start confusing sparks for light.

Alex:
That sounds like experience talking.

Claire:
You could say that.

Claire – Late Evening

She closed her phone and stared at the mug cooling beside her.
The phrase “wrong fire” lingered — old words wrapped in new ones.
Once, she had called it zeal.
Later she learned the quieter name: self-importance in disguise.

Across the room, the lamplight trembled against the wall.
She turned it off, leaving the faint scent of coffee and burnt match in the dark.