The Wound

You stand in a dark room, wick exposed, wax heavy with waiting. The match hovers near enough to feel, and your whole self contracts. You have spent a lifetime protecting this form. Every refusal bought another day of your shape intact. But the wick is yellowing anyway, and the wax has cracked despite your care. The only question is whether you will end having burnt, or having waited. The match moves closer. The moment before burning when the candle understands what burning will cost. Wick thinning, wax weeping itself away in slow rivers, and the form you've spent a lifetime protecting becoming air and heat. The darkness waits. You could refuse and remain whole, a perfect shape in a room that stays dark forever. But the wick says yes. To this room. This dark. This hour.

The Path

The match touches. No unburning now. Your whole form braces against what's coming. The burning begins with a hiss and a blue flare at the base of the wick – the hottest point and the truest. The first instant is violence – heat that makes you want to scream the flame away. Your edges run. Your guarded shape dissolves. You mourn the shape you were. The darkness retreats. A wall emerges – stone, cracked, older than you knew. A face turns towards your light. Then more. The darkness was never empty. Then – warmth. Your own. You have held heat your whole existence without once feeling it. Even as you thin, even as the wick chars, you understand. You were never the wax. You were the light, trapped inside it.

The Shadow

He watched the eyes. When they wandered, he made his flame leap. When they settled, he staged a crisis – a flicker, a near-extinction. The room cheered the rescue. They caught their breath at the danger. He learnt that they loved the threat of darkness more than the steady light. His wife stopped watching first. Then his daughter. They'd seen the performance too many times. One night, mid-flare, the room emptied. In the silence, he heard what they'd been cheering for. Not light. Spectacle. The room grew bright with his burning – then dark, sudden, the applause outlasting the flame by only a breath. He was alone before the wick went cold. – She hoards her wax and demands a darkness worthy of her burning – a void total and permanent enough to justify the loss. One night, small fists pound on her door. Please, a voice says. It's so dark. She calculates: this draft is too small. This child will leave. This shadow is temporary. She does not open the door. She saves herself for a monumental darkness that never comes. Somewhere, a child who once knocked, has learnt to walk in the dark.

The Cut