Author’s Note: This poem unfolds at the same patient pace as the candle it observes. Its length is meant to be an embodiment of the slow enactment of sorrow itself.
Sorrow rarely storms the gates.
It prefers a smaller entrance—
a match struck against porcelain,
that sulfurous whisper
before light takes shape.
The candle stands upright in its brass throat,
ivory, almost innocent,
its surface smooth as a held breath.
You light it for reasons that feel reasonable—
ambience, perhaps,
or the softness that forgives a room
its hard edges.
The flame gathers itself slowly,
a petal of fire opening and closing
with each exhale in the house.
It leans into drafts you cannot feel,
tilts its bright head
as though listening.
At first nothing changes.
The wax remains sculpted,
cool-boned and pale.
The wick, a slender spine,
holds its posture bravely.
But look closer.
There is a darkening at the tip—
a quiet charring,
the black bead forming
like a thought you would rather not finish.
It glows from within,
red as an ember hiding in its own ash.
The heat loosens the body of the candle.
Not all at once—
never with spectacle.
A thin gloss appears at the rim,
a tremor of liquidity.
Then a slow descent:
wax turning to shine,
shine turning to droplet,
droplet to a small translucent lake
cupping the flame.
You watch.
The surface quivers
whenever the flame inhales.
Tiny tides lap against the unmoving wall.
A fragrance of warmed paraffin
settles into the curtains,
into your sleeves,
into the open mouth of the room.
Minutes pass without declaring themselves.
There is no visible subtraction,
no chunk torn away.
The candle appears steadfast,
nearly identical
to the candle it was.
Yet the wick is shortening
in increments too modest
for pride.
Each second
takes a grain.
Each breath
a filament.
Sorrow proceeds this way.
It does not alter your reflection
all at once.
It warms you from the inside
until something structural
begins to soften.
You still answer the door.
You rinse the glass.
You fold the towel along its old creases.
The day goes on wearing its ordinary clothes.
Meanwhile—
inside the brass holder—
there is a geography forming:
ridges of cooled drips,
stalactites hardened mid-fall,
a white valley carved
around the dwindling core.
The flame continues its patient labor,
unaware of clocks.
It has only one task:
to be itself,
to consume what holds it upright.
From moment to moment
nothing seems different.
The room remains the room.
The table remains the table.
Your hands remain your hands.
And yet—
Hours have thinned the column.
The wick, once vertical,
bends inward,
a tired reed in shallow water.
The molten pool deepens.
The walls cave gently toward the center
as if listening for news.
You glance away.
You glance back.
Still, it burns.
You could swear
it will burn forever.
But eventually you notice
the brass plate shining through
where ivory once stood.
A shallow basin of cooled wax
holds the fossil of flame—
a curled black thread
leaning against its own exhaustion.
Sorrow leaves such evidence.
No crash.
No shattered pane.
Only the quiet arithmetic
of something becoming less
while appearing the same.
You cannot say when the candle
crossed from whole
to almost gone.
You only know
that at some unnoticed hour
the light you trusted
was busy
turning itself
into absence.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Jill Szoo Wilson 