When the Flame Bows

I have carried this fire within me

for longer than I can remember.

It has warmed strangers on cold nights,

lit pathways for those who were lost,

consumed the secrets I should not have kept,

and shown me my own face in the mirror

when I had forgotten who I was.

Today I feel it dimming.

Not with sorrow, but with the silence

that comes to all things that have burned

faithfully, fully, without reserve.

The fuel that fed it, passion and youth

and the fierce belief that I could change

the unchangeable, grows thin now,

like oil in a lamp at dawn.

I do not call this defeat.

The fire taught me what it came to teach.

That light given freely multiplies.

That warmth shared returns as love.

That even in burning, even in the act

of consuming all we are, we become

something the world needs.

Now the flame grows contemplative,

no longer leaping toward the stars

but settling into remnants, into glow,

into that deep red patience

that never complains.

I think of the forests that burn

so new trees may rise from their ashes.

I think of the candle that melts

into nothing, having lit a hundred other candles.

I think of the sun itself, burning away

at the center of all things, never once

complaining of its slow expenditure.

This is the wisdom of fire.

To give until there is no more giving.

To illuminate without counting the cost.

To transform and be transformed.

And when at last the final spark

releases itself into the air,

to trust that what was light

becomes something else, something

equally necessary. Perhaps memory.

Perhaps inspiration for another soul

who will tend their own flame

in their own time.

I am not afraid of this ending.

The fire has shown me how to burn

and now it shows me how to rest.

Both are sacred. Both are needed.

Let the ashes cool in their own time.

Let them settle soft as prayer.

Let them nourish what comes next.

For I have been the flame,

and the flame has been enough.

I have lit my small corner of the darkness,

and the darkness, in its kindness,

has held me gently while I burned.