This, Too, Is Distinction

Tonight the candle twines fire with fire,
braided flame blooming in the bowl of my hand.
It hovers—lucent, tender—
in the pause between ease and ache,
a flicker caught in the throat of the room.
I hold it like breath, like a name half-spoken,
until my knuckles remember:
this is how light becomes letting go.

The air settles. My ribs still.
I slip like light through closed shutters.
It isn’t night yet—
but day has already folded.

Wine pools lush—red as reverence,
thick with warmth and memory.
A spill of want. Of what-if. Of stay-with-me.
It clings to the lip of the cup,
drips slow into the hollows of my throat.
It stains the silence. I drink. It lingers.
Her hand finds mine—warm
as breath against a mirror fogged by waiting.
I drink again. I let it mark me.

Then the burn.
Not fire—
but the body forgetting.
Tongue lined with metal.
Sugar crusted with bitterness.
Hunger folds into hollow.
The sweetness stings.
I pour again. The blessing says full,
so I overflow.

Spices now—
clove cracked between molars,
cardamom crushed soft in the seam of my palm.
Orange blossom braided into cloth,
rose-oil coiled at the wrist,
where her mouth pressed once,
before the room became a threshold.

I lift the sachet, breathe deep.
Memory rises in the chest like smoke,
sharp and soft,
a sweetness I can’t keep.

Each comfort I carry
warms before it wanes.

And the candle—
when it lowers into wine,
it does not scream.
It sighs,
smoke curling like a secret told.
The light unspools with a hiss
and I watch the last flicker fade,
the luminous self un-becoming—
unspeaking—
like language, like appetite,
like I will, some day too soon.

I lift the smoke toward my chest,
toward the place
where asking outlives words.
It stays longer than the flame.
The silence, longer still.

I mark my wrists. I kiss my fingers.
I press them to my lips
until I remember they are mine.

The week returns and I'm not ready—
its gone-cold teas, its threadbare sleep,
the soup I nearly finish, but don't.
Her hands refill the glass I forgot about,
set it near, without her saying a word.

And I cross again—
from sacred into unsure,
from held to holding on,
from the pulse of the flame
to the slow twilight
of what remains.