The Campfire Dies

He asked me,

“Would you have stayed if we’d gone camping?”

as if a child could reignite the flames

of a marriage already burning down to ash.

His eyes shimmered like smoke-stung glass,

mourning choices that were never his to hold.

I had been reaching back,

hands in the soot of old memories,

trying to cup whatever sparks remained

from the rare quiet she allowed us:

those brief, glowing embers

when it was just him

and just me

and the world quit roaring.

But chaos had fanned itself into wildfire.

He was the only warmth left in that house,

the last coal refusing to die out,

even as she worked

slowly, painfully,

to turn him from my flame.

We’d made only one memory

that belonged to us alone:

a tent,

a machete tapping a stubborn log

like a heartbeat refusing to quit,

a fire we cooked over and laughed beside,

its glow climbing our faces

like hope trying to lift itself up.

And me sipping firewater

from a bottle she weaponized,

twisting its burn into proof

that I couldn’t be trusted

to hold his faith without scorching it.

So before I ran from a house on fire

to protect myself

and the child whose flame still needed shelter,

I reached once more

for a moment of quiet warmth,

one last chance to breathe beside him,

to see if anything in us

could still catch.

One more spark

to keep the campfire

from dying.