i am hope.

 

They closed my eyes when they knew the end was nigh. I take a deep breath, rather say I try to, as the logs pile up.

One, seven, thirteen, twenty-two. Perhaps a reminder of the woods that raised us all. I lay still in their lifeless embrace, stuck in a labyrinth of labyrinthine wooden grooves. Then come the flames, warm and pure, reminiscent of my mother’s arms. I melt into their dance, caressing my singeing skin and parched lips.

 

I can hear a man sob, maybe a couple more; is he my son? Is that why he grieves? It’s hard to recall now. When I am ash and the ash cradles me, existence fades like a puff of breath on a cold winter morning: gone long ago, yet slipping slowly down the subtle slope.

And I don’t know much anymore, can’t remember for the life of me. (pardon my words, old habits die hard; at least harder than a mere mortal) But I know that the man who wept today inhaled the smoke of lost dreams, the smoke of memories fatally forgotten.

And perhaps he’ll remember it was the dream that earned me the stab wound in my gut, that it was the dream that painted a sign on my back, yelled defiance, and dared those tyrants to try halting me in my wake. For the belief in the dream was stronger than the dream itself.

 

Tonight, he’ll go to the shack he calls home, bring out the pen and write of the smoke he breathed and the ash that he touched when the fire died out. He’ll write of crushed hope and of the grief rolling down his cheek as the spirits of exhaustion shall cling to him like leeches, draining the life out of his mind. He’ll write of the flame that died today but came back stronger than it ever was: a white-hot tempest of passion, scorching the skin of the witches who dance around it, their screams, and the flame’s symphony singing ‘revolution’ in perfect harmony.

And perhaps the veil of harmony will be ripped off those fascist faces soon, revealing the charred bones underneath. His words will yell defiance too and men shall join him in his chants. My flame shall be the spark that ignites the chain reaction of this movement. The songbird will listen and then whistle along to the melody that seeks to uproot the malady that’s long been lurking in the shadows, nocking arrows from a safe distance.

It won’t be easy, but the masses will rise, weeping the same tears the man cries, the sunlit sparkle in that divine water urging them to rise up and fight, to topple the throne that throws them to their merciless throes. No, I shall never live again, but the spirit of my life would walk on, in a thousand new souls: a thousand-fold more alive.

 

And the day when it actually ends, the day when the day is won, I shall smile in my ashen remains, knowing that the stab wound I gifted myself was well worth the pain: for in death, I became what I sought to be: unceasing, unfaltering, infinite.