The flame has long been blown out,

and the candle doesn’t glow like before.

As the dark caves in to swallow me,

I can only watch the last fragile light,

how it becomes lost in the impending dark.

There’s a gaping hole in my chest,

one that can only be filled by a sweet escape,

and when the route closes the wound reopens

like a scar that bleeds again in the dark,

and heals once the light drips into the room again.

Now that the feeling has finally dissipated,

and the road out of the abyss is gone,

I wander aimlessly like a child through the night,

in a room I only know to navigate in the light,

in a world encased in shadow and void of refuge.

The shadows climb up the walls like spiders,

 but I have nothing to ward off the dark tonight.

The hollow feeling fills my ribcage,

and the last of the dream swells in my throat

before disintegrating like ash in my lungs.

The unending nothingness traces the floor,

but from the end of the hall glows a new candle,

with its delicate flicker that reminds me,

even as the night closes in on me once again,

there remains an exit to this labyrinth.