How a Room Forgets the Fire

First, the blaze performs—

walls flushed gold,

shadows bowing and stretching

like late guests at the door.

You say it feels like we’ve paused time,

hands open to the heat,

faces rinsed in flicker,

as if we could stay

inside this orange heartbeat

forever.

But the logs have other plans.

They sigh into themselves.

Collapse into fragile cities of coal.

Flames that once shouted

Now speak in lowercase.

Shortening into commas of light

between longer and longer breaths

of dark.

We keep feeding the silence

with little nothings—

“Remember when…?”

“It used to…”

Our words drift up with the smoke.

Thin and curling,

already forgetting the shape

of their own urgency.

One last bright tongue of fire

licks the edge of a blackened branch,

tries to stand up,

fails gracefully.

Its final flare throws your profile

in sharp relief:

all high cheekbones and history,

the ghost of every argument

We didn’t win or lose,

only outlast.

Then it happens—

not a grand finale,

just a soft exhale,

the light folding itself

into a small red sign

and then—

nothing.

We don’t move.

In the dim, the ash glows faint.

like stubborn memories

That won’t quite agree

to die.

Somewhere in that pale dust

A new morning is already

warming its hands.