2/3/22

My babies vanish like wisps of smoke
from a freshly extinguished candle.
Any attempt to grasp them
dissipates them more quickly.

Helplessly, all I can do is watch them waft heavenward
and then they are gone
without even memories to cling to.
Only the memory that they were.
For just a moment,
they were.

And now they are not.

Yet, wretchedly,
like the wick, blackened,
retaining for one moment more the heat, the ember, the proof of the flame.
I still am.


I am cold.