draft
You would look at me now as you would a stranger. You would not recognize this fervor, nor the intensity of it, of a candle burning too bright, too fast, too violent in the dead of night. When you come to stand before me, do not speak, I implore you, for I am a coward, tame and meek and impotent in words. I am buried here under letters of the imagination, waiting for the end to pass long before the beginning arrives. Ecstasy of the heart, deceit of the mind, send me hurtling toward the thousand cranes in my chest. What is this to you? The candle on the sill burns bright and fast and violent still. If I blow it out, it shall take me with it. Tell me this. Would you rejoice? Would you take pity, would you bid me only insouciance? I dare not claim to know. And so I write. I sit by the window, put pen to paper and write until you and I are erased into cosmic nothingness, prickling pinpoints of dying light. Outside, the wind whirls and wails and whirls again. I hear it calling your name.
