candles.

when i was seven or eight
(or some other age lost in
heaps of summer)
i used to prayed for power outages. 
the silent flicker & then
darkness in the flailing arms of
july storm-- the whole family in 
the living room screams 
at the abruptness of the dark--
we're reminded what we've been
using to sweep night from
the living room floor along with
the tails of the poisoned mice--
my father would
open the top drawer farthest
to the left all full of lighters &
half-used boxes of birthday candles
to take out
our baptism candles because those
were the thickest ones
we had aside from the pink &
purple ones from the advent wreath--
we could have pretended it was
four weeks till christmas--
lit a candle every hour
until midnight-- without the clocks
we could own time & 
i secretly hoped that it would go on
for days--maybe forever even--
i could imagine being
happy in a future without 
power & maybe i would tell my children
decades later after they were born by
candles that there was a time
when lights flickered like
eye lids & the street lamps 
carried our names like postage stamps--
i walk out onto the
porch & notice that my skin
glow out there as if my flesh were 
a white burning candle ignited
by the wind striking matches against my
skin-- i become the first candle
to only flicker under the barrage of
rain-- nothing put me out
& my father sits on an upside down
paint bucket &
inside two candles sit on the
kitchen table-- a third my mother
finds 
makes the room smell like evergreen
forest & the christmas tree's ghost
comes back a skeleton bare of needles--
the lights flicker back on suddenly 
as we're climbing the steps to bed
& i am always disappointed &
i always imagine myself running around
the house & turning everything off
again so that is can be dark &
we can glow on the porch--
match stick bodies-- each
inch of skin struck into fire--
the night becomes a mouth of 
ash-- we blow out the baptism candles
but the room still smells faintly of
of a pine scented yankee candle.