Little Candles

Dying little candle.
Huff of wind.

Gone.

Extinguished before i could
even see the beauty you illuminated.
when will i learn to love you
little candle?
so brief as you are.
i can't... i can't see.
always looking behind me to catch what i missed.
and what i'm missing is you.

always flickering out.

puff.

white smoke clouds my eyes.
now here you are again,
relit a thousand times a second.
will i see you, little candle,
before you die?

i will never see your brothers and sisters again.
though i have evidence of their brief existences.
they make me melancholy,
and glad,
these notebooks of the past. these
digital corpses frozen and waiting till
science and sleep reignite that spark of life
in my dreams.

the children all die
before i learn their names. just a flash
of their faces emblazened on my brain.
when i lay down to sleep and close my eyes,
in the moment before i enter a dream,
i see their images on the backs of my eyelids.
all their features refined and details filled in.
everything missing and unnoticed is replaced
with the shape of beauty and
perfection and
wonder.

i smile the day's last smile
and peer into the little white lights
overcome with old memories and
forgetting all the things
i'm forgetting to see.