At the Edge of Firelight

It starts as a cooling,

a dimming at the edge

of what the fire reaches.

The room contracts in winter

the way the human body contracts,

slowly, and without permission.

Outside, the frost has sealed

the last of the evening shut.

The trees stand the way witnesses stand,

still, and saying nothing,

and somehow everywhere at once.

You are watching the flames.

You are always watching the flames.

Because what is lit

is easier to love

than what is not.

The fire throws your shadow forward.

It climbs the far wall like a second self,

arms slightly wrong,

head at an angle you don't recognise

as your own.

And yet.

The neck knows before the mind does.

Something in the spine

reads the air

the way an animal reads it,

without language,

without proof,

with absolute certainty.

A log shifts in the grate.

The room brightens once, briefly,

then pulls back

into something deeper than before.

The corners darken by a degree

you could not measure

but can feel precisely.

You think: it is only the house.

The house is settling into the cold.

The way old things

will creak and sigh

as though remembering something

they were asked to forget.

You do not turn.

Turning would collapse it,

whatever it is

would shrink back into ordinary dark,

and you would be left

with nothing to fear

and no way to explain the cold.

So you stay.

You feed another log to the fire.

You watch the flame accept it

the way you accept

what winter asks of you,

to sit with what you cannot name,

and not look back.