After the Burn

At first, the fire performs.

It crackles like it has something to prove,

throws light against the walls

as if arguing with the night.

We believe this is what burning means.

We feed it stories.

Old letters.

Careful silences.

Things we once held because letting go

felt like betrayal.

But fire grows tired of spectacle.

Eventually, it learns restraint.

The flames shorten their sentences.

Heat loosens its grip on the room.

What was once hunger becomes patience,

and patience becomes knowing.

This is how endings actually arrive.

Not with collapse,

but with a slow unlearning of need.

The logs remember their shape

long after the blaze forgets them.

Embers blink like distant cities,

each one holding a reason

it stayed as long as it did.

I sit close, not to revive it,

not to steal its last warmth,

but to witness the moment

it chooses completion over continuation.

Ash settles without apology.

No one claps.

Nothing asks to be saved.

The fire leaves behind

a quieter kind of proof:

that something can give everything

and still stop.

Smoke lifts what cannot be carried forward.

The room exhales.

The dark does not rush in.

It waits its turn.

By morning, there will only be

a pale circle on the ground,

cool to the touch,

honest about what happened here.

This is not loss.

This is the discipline of ending.

The flame did its work

and stepped aside,

teaching the night

how to hold what remains

without burning it again.

***