The Last Candle In The Room

By Anushka Devesh

There is a darkness that waits at

the edges,

pressing against the walls,

soft as velvet, merciless as stone.

In the centre of it, a single candle

burns,

its flame trembling like a secret

that refuses to die.

Shadows gather on the ceiling,

long silhouettes bending,

whispering of everything

the walls once heard.

They lean closer to the wick,

hungry for its surrender.

The candle does not speak,

yet it tells the story of every

silence.

Of letters never written,

of footsteps that never returned,

of voices that broke before they

reached the air.

The wax melts slowly, pooling into

shapes

that resemble broken maps.

Each drop remembers a road

never walked,

a promise never kept.

The flame bends, caught in its

own exhaustion,

yet it straightens again, as if to

say,

“I am the last witness,

and I will not close my eyes

until the room forgets itself.”

Outside the window, the world has

already gone blind.

Inside,

the candle fights with a quiet fury,

a fragile soldier

against an army of night.

We call such things small

a candle, a flame, a breath.

But the smallest light

holds the heaviest burden.

It carries the memory of fire,

the dream of morning,

the weight of everything

that refuses to vanish.

And when it finally dies,

the room does not fill with silence.

It fills with the echo,

of all that the candle kept alive

for just a little longer.

When the candle dies,

It does not take the darkness with

it.

It leaves behind the memory

Of how even the smallest flame

Dared to defy the night.

By Anushka Devesh