When the Flame Lowers

At first it is a roar,

a restless tongue of light

licking the night clean.

Every crackle insists

on its own bright living.

But endings creep in quietly—

a soft collapse of embers,

the orange surrender

to a gray hush of ash.

The shadows reclaim

what the fire once defied.

I sit with it,

watching how brilliance

dims into memory.

It does not vanish,

it becomes—

a warmth folded into bone,

a smoke-threaded ghost

clinging to my breath.

All fires end,

but the dark is never whole:

in the ash lies the outline

of beginnings,

black soil waiting

for the spark’s return.