Light a candle

Her thoughts traveled the world of words and memories, ideas and visions as she watched the light of a candle dance in the rhythm of her breath. It seemed ages ago that it was the dance of confusion and despair. Now the light moved steady and confident. Her eyes wandered away from the candle, through the dark room, to the windowpane.

In the days before the quiet winter when darkness comes along with cold mercilessness, there comes another visitor. This visitor is loud and impulsively raging, pulsing through your mind. It is an autumn storm of change, veiled in a haze of bittersweet abeyance that covers the last glimpse of sunlight and carries it away into the unknown.

And then comes the time when everything is muted. A silent time of long forgotten hopes and dreams. Hopes that maybe were torn apart by gleaming lightning. Dreams that maybe got lost in storms and darkness.

The roaring storm, she had hosted in her mind for a far too long time, raged in front of her window. She could not ban it from her life, yet. She could never reset herself, could not make the past untrue. She could not change the future’s design, but she could heal what has been hurt.

The storm was not yet gone. But after she had managed to get hold of the hands of shock that pulled closer and closer around her neck, she was able to breathe again. The hands didn’t let go, yet. But they were losing strength by the time. One day at a time. She had lighted a candle. A sign of life. Her life. A light that brightened up her mind again and, with a warming hug, it carefully put her troubled soul back together, to make her see that she was not alone. The candle shined a light into the darkness of her home.

She knew that the storm was not over. But now, she was free again. Free for new beginnings. New words. New ideas. New visions. She folded her hands and closed her eyes. For one precious moment in time, she didn’t have to face the storms of trouble that were about to come. A whispered prayer. A wish, silently made and sent into the future, to make her strong. To make her strong enough to open her eyes again. To make her walk tall.

In memory, she glanced over her shoulder and took a valiant step back into the light. The candle still danced solemnly, lovingly enlightening the path ahead to her fate.