Watching the Last Fire

The fire has learned the shape of leaving.

It no longer leaps. It loosens its grip

on the dark, releases the wood grain

one ring at a time. What was once loud

now breathes.

I watch it thin itself into intention—

flame turning careful, as if aware

this is its final argument with night.

Each tongue of light pauses,

considers, then withdraws.

There was a moment it meant everything:

heat for the hands, a center for the room,

a reason shadows gathered so closely.

Now it forgets its own hunger.

It burns without wanting.

The logs collapse inward, softly,

like a body accepting stillness.

Red dims to rust, rust to memory.

Ash lifts, then settles,

a gray punctuation mark.

What ends is not the fire, exactly,

but its insistence.

The need to be seen.

The work of becoming light.

In its place, a quieter truth:

warmth lingering in the air,

the smell of smoke clinging to clothes,

the knowledge that something finished

without asking to be saved.

Dark returns, not as loss,

but as space.

And in that space,

the last coal holds, briefly,

then lets go.