Wax and Ashes

December,
frigid December.
I always think back to that December,
a month so cold that I can only think
of the fire I craved, the heat I desired,
the warmth that had me beg for more.
I was so taken by its glow,
so addicted to its calidity
that when the flame had burnt out
I went through withdrawal.

The fire that burned me
and made me its wick,
it melted me,
it used me up,
it wasted me away.

For the light that I found a home with
was so easy to spread
that it ignited so many like me
and burned us,
crumbled us,
the love and desire we needed
left us as ashes,
as shards,
as irreparable pieces.

He keeps a gallery of us, you know.
A hall of those he's burned through,
he places the ash turned sculptures
on display, in a trophy case of sorts
but you can't break the glass
and there is no key.

We can never take the ashes back.

And the wax armor I once brandished
has been melted, liquefied,
I've lost it forever.

I have no more to give.

For I am Icarus,
though now without his wings
and the sun has taken from me
the one thing that allows me to fly
and feel free.
For I am a wax flower
that has had its petals melted
and all I am is a stigma
though more of a stigmata
trapped to a thorny stem
that ties me against my will to the ground.

I have nothing left to give,
nothing left to build.
I have no walls to put up
if I have nothing to build them with
because he pillaged my cities,
he took the one thing I had that he didn't.

I'm left with nothing.
No defenses, no core,
only silhouettes and mental pirouettes
because my head spins out from terrors
of a fire in a cold December.

In most winters
the flowers wilt, though I burned.
The birds fly south
but I was let to melt.
And the candles and chandeliers
in every home are warm,
they welcome in the new
and shelter you from harm.

One by one the candles dim
they go out, and they leave
shadows in their absence.
They leave a faint ring of light
but screams and voids of darkness.