Under the Candlelight

by Aimee Preciado

At first it started with the flicker from the candlelight. The wax dripped onto the wooden dresser leaving its mark, when you walked into the most intimate part of my room where my Titanic Legos laid sprawled after I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. And you sat on my unmade bed where I decided that folding the lone white blanket required too much of my energy.

The sunset’s beauty is unmatched by any other sunset that came before it. With its orange and purple hues melting together to form a color man has not yet established a name for. Or so I saw through a picture my sister texted me earlier that afternoon because my teal curtains still lay flat against the window of my room. Because I deemed the singular motion of gliding my hand to reveal the outdoors too inconsequential. My sister never liked you. She never liked the way you treated me or the way you made your dreams my dreams. In one way, I understood. In another, I didn’t want to.

But, you never liked her either. She was the reminder of who I could be if I wasn’t tied to you like a balloon tied to the wrist of an eager child. I remember one day before the act of folding my blanket that you now sit on became a chore, you told me that my sister’s independence was a flaw. I carried that within myself and I clung to you like a life raft. Only we were both drowning. You look around with your blank expression tracing the inner workings of my bedroom with your mind and you curse at the wind telling me I need to put myself together, that my disheveled bed is the reason why you are here. And all my other deferred projects are the reason why you can no longer love me.

But with a sunset so beautiful I cannot help but be reminded of the day we first met. The sun shone bright casting a spotlight on you and only you as if it was within the universe’s plan to make me aware of your existence. I recall the way your voice sounded as if it carried a slight worry to it, but the worries of tomorrow were cast away as you spoke your first words in my direction.

You began to speak the same way, but your words were hesitant and I noticed through the corner of my eye, the flame from the candle you once gifted me on a cold, fall day began to grow taller and taller. It reaches my curtains and it continues to grow taller and taller until it reaches the wall I never finished painting. You see it, too, I know you do but you stand up anyways. Your bare feet step on a yellow lego before you make your way out with a vacant look to your eyes. And I am left utterly confused. My mind roams and I am reminded of the time I first bought those legos and you called them stupid. You told me I would never commit the time and energy to build a Titanic lego no matter how small it is. I am reminded that you are right.

I am left alone as the flames engulf me in their fiery fury with only my memories to hold me tight. I manage to take the three measly steps from where I stand to my window and open the curtains, allowing the flames to continue to burn me. As I suspected, my world is on fire. The sunset once beautiful, now a heathen with its fiery blaze burning entire worlds apart. My world is on fire and the only thing I cannot wrap my head around is our unfinished story.

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(Featured image from Pexels)