I stayed awake
all night
to ensure my heart
did not burst into flames
in the morning
the clouds were red
flame
Once upon a flame
Once upon a flame
Blood-hot glances lingered slow
Until the fire died
Many happy
Some or many years ago of course my mum was there. Nine months earlier and the man they called my father had been too. Now both are disappeared, one too soon before the other, and the counting of the years wears thin.
The best thing remain the candles – if you forget the jokes about the fire risk and the firemen and now the fire service. Each candle stands for a memory, a year that has passed or a friend, and calmly shines its light into the future. The more candles on the cake, the brighter the light they cast, the better they show us what is to come.
Though, through fear, we may not want to know. So we blow out the candles and pinch out the stubs and blow away the memories and shade out the light. The future is arriving fast enough; I do not want to see it.
How did our paths meet?
So how did our paths meet?
Did I track you through the needle-green forest?
Perhaps.
Or did you follow my footprints along the dried earth
between the long grasses
across the river
in the dark?
I do not know or don’t remember.
But the lines of flame that come to an arrowhead
that meet and stop and flare and entwine
the lines of flame point to a destiny
where we have now arrived.
Old dreams
I piled my old, dried-out dreams into the bottom of the bare wooden boat. With the strength in my shoulders I heaved it out towards the horizon and, almost casually, dropped in a match. The flames flickered higher as the boat flared into the night, dreams becoming stars, each for their moment.
Remembering reality
Air settles heavy around us
and gravity wears us down.
My shoulders bend, my chest caves, my legs lose their feeling.
And then, for a moment, a breath’s time,
the flame is glimpsed in the distance.
Horizon
If we believe the candle can resist the storm, it may. It may.
I will hold my hands around the flame for you.
Flames danced
The stranger looked past Kelly as the fire cleaned, hollowed, scoured the building. Flames danced in his dark eyes.
Kelly could not look away. The flames flickered higher and higher, the spinning blue lights behind her lit and shadowed his face.
Later, the sun coming up behind him darkened his face. The fire was dead but still they stood there, flames in his eyes still flaring.
He pulled the hood closer. He lifted her cold hand to his lips and blew gently on it. Time stopped. Blackness.
The stranger’s fingers were still linked with hers, the sun still rising. He began to walk away from the black dead building. Kelly followed and they ran side by side, fingers still locked together.
On the wasteland beyond the not yet burnt buildings they stopped, breathed heavily, the flames in Kelly’s eyes reflected in the stranger’s.
“Gonna do another one the mornin’?”
“Aye.”
Deep, deep, black underground
Deep, deep, black underground, the spidery dead refuse tumbles down, heavy-stomached, bouncing, leaping, twirled on the slope. The flames flare higher a moment, then not. No spirit escapes; all is consumed. Elsewhere, other, uncountable, existences shimmer.
simonsalento 