When the Fire Dies

Shut down long ago. Ever since embodying the form of a ghost.

Only a ghost.

Often invisible. Always shadowy. She travels through the forest unknowingly searching for the substance lost lifetimes prior. Until the day she gambled on believing it would all be okay. There was one tree, just a bit off her usual path, splintered by lightening. Belief that this wood could become a fire warmed her phantom soul. And dreams of the lost substance paved a new path. The fire lit the way. Color began to fill the shadows.

But fire can burn and splinters cut deeply. The same love she dared to imagine robbed her of the substance once more. And the pain is deeper this time. She played. And lost the bet. Only to find the heat of the pain and the splinter of rejection. The failed courage couldn’t win her the body, color, or dreams she spent eternity searching for.

Suspended between body and spirit. Unable to haunt or to walk the earth. The search for substance abandoned. To be only a ghost. To fall into the shadows and black holes that hide the pain—her desperate wish. But it’s too late. She gambled and lost. Feeling herself dying, now. Choosing death. The only way out of the nothing.

Shut down once again. The dreams have lost; and the fire, died.

Only darkness lives.