This candle is around twenty-five years old, purchased and first lit when I had just moved into the Boston condo. Way back then, in its original incarnation, this candle was black, but in the decades that followed, and its various locations in the sunlight, it has lightened to a shade of midnight blue – one of those mystical machinations of astral bodies and their various powers.
As the wax melted and revealed pieces of a life two and a half decades ago, I thought of all the particles and dust that were now being freed – and what looked like an old match stick buried in the dark blue abyss now suddenly recalled to life. The thrill of excavation in a candle. What parties had this object once helped to illuminate? What romances and friendships had it witnessed with its glowing flame? What sorrows and breakdowns did it ever aim to ease? The past felt plaintively bound into this present moment, weighing it down and still somehow buoying the heart. Long-dormant memories rise to the surface as the flame licks at the tender bindings of the past.
The evening in Boston has begun early, and I start to decorate for the holidays again after skipping it all last year.
