A Letter To My First Love

The Prompt - Write a poem on endings, using flame or fire as your central image.

This is the final challenge in our Vocal+ Fall Poetry Series, and it’s all about endings. Flames fade, fires burn out, and what remains is ash, memory, or the promise of something new.

Your poem might take fire as destruction, as warmth, as memory, or as transformation. However you approach it, let the flame guide you to what it means to reach an ending, whether it arrives with silence or with a burst of light.

Write like you are watching the last fire fade.

My first love, you know that is what you were.

I was enthralled, everything else a blur.

You were just out of the armed services

You were the older brother of my friend's

~

We had beautiful children together

I didn't trust you were altogether

Your drinking and drug use were out of hand

I stopped, you could not, we had to disband

~

Our case - we are birds of the same feather

The storm, I knew that we couldn't weather

Our children needed me more - I would pout

It broke my heart. The flame slowly went out.

~

I was told to write a letter, oh s--t

When I finished the letter, we burned it.

I watched on that starry night how that light

faded. It did - it was over that night!