Litany of the Cooling Hearth

The fire learns our names in vowels of heat,

then forgets them, syllable by syllable,

as if unspelling a blessing.

༺ _ ༻

Kindling was a bright impatience.

Logs were our bravado.

We fed the mouth that praised us

until it yawned, satisfied,

and began to close.

༺ _ ༻

Now the flames are lowercase —

Brief edits of orange

in the margins of a night that has already begun.

Ash gathers like snowfall with no weather,

soft and declarative.

༺ _ ༻

We speak in futures that missed their trains:

we would, we might, we could—

each phrase a spark drifting up and out,

cooling before it finds a star.

༺ _ ༻

Listen: the coals keep a red grammar,

punctuation marks of heat—

ellipses where we hoped for an exclamation.

Endings love their commas.

They ask us to pause, not vanish.

༺ _ ༻

When the last ember blinks,

It does not argue.

It simply hands back what it borrowed:

light to the dark,

smoke to the rafters,

warmth to our open, unarmed palms.

༺ _ ༻

We don’t clap.

We don’t pray.

We breathe the thin perfume of cinders

and practice a gentler grip.

༺ _ ༻

Some lessons arrive as a blaze;

this one walks out barefoot—

leaving the door ajar,

the room cooler,

the air clear enough to hear

the first quiet footstep of morning.