Let the Dying Sing of Beauty

By this fire,

logs sizzling wet in the mouth of the flame,

the thick silence of grief for a dying world melts away

and my words return.

Perhaps they are nothing more than scratches on a page,

fleeting thoughts passing through a timeless void,

destined like the log to be consumed by fire and decay.

Even so, these words are my own in a place where nothing is mine.

They are notes bubbling up from my soul,

however faint, a sound, however fleeting, a song I can follow,

a rhythm that sends ripples across the invisible lake of longing

to give and belong to something bigger than myself,

to not be silenced by the dying,

but to let the dying sing of all the beauty worth a lifetime of letting go.

As the fire devours the log, I praise the grief that stings of love,

the horror that renders us raw and malleable,

the endings that unite us in death's sacred womb.

By this fire, I am bound in holy reverence

to the beauty we can't help but sing for,

die for,

kill for,

grieve for.

I shape these fleeting thoughts into a song of wonder

and savor the flame as it licks my bones bare.