Sloppy Etymology

Sometimes I imagine each of you to be candles I’m deliberately extinguishing. There is no reason for your flame to flutter around me anymore. My darkness pervades and engulfs everything with it. There may have been a warning about that, a sudden quivering of my lip, a missing flicker in my eyes, an open fire of accusations, incendiary performances like a portent of wildfires to come.

Sometimes I imagine each of you to be candles that I no longer wish to ignite. My feelings are transient. The mightiest fires that initially spread fast and burn strong eventually die down; it’s just as simple as that.

Sometimes I imagine myself to be the wick that does not possess any strength to withstand a flame. That also means I can’t pass on anything to anyone else. There is nothing to set me afire. There is nothing I can set fire to. We fear and condemn the frightening things we see in others only because we would not want them to be present within ourselves all along.

Sometimes I find myself gripping on to melting hopes like a candle with no purpose. When I’m lit, I find myself dying. When I’m not, I’m still withering, albeit slowly. Whether you push or pull, when you try too hard you find yourself on a road where giving up is the only option.

Sometimes I can pave my own way without any kind of help and it’s enough. But other times I need that one candle to guide me home where there’s a fireplace used for making controlled fires. My paranoia is mostly because I have been searching for quite long and I’m scared of third degree burns. Let me rephrase, I might not seem the type but I’m often needy and I prefer to admire things in absolute privacy. I long for my existence to be set on fire. I would like to feel the heat in my mind and feel my heart set ablaze, perpetually.

Then again, when I look at tiny candles burning humbly and not asking for much except a dark corner to spread their warmth I feel like I could use something subtle instead; if you’re into that.