Embers

When I was small

I learned to fold this gilded, silvered paper,

its meaning still obscure.

Grandma tossed the squares of ghost money

to the flames, their shimmer

flickering the stairway, pulsing at our shadows.

Along the wall

pranced shifting characters, swaying forms.

Their veiled inner life,

masked in strange abstraction,

seemed impossible to know.

Yet some writhing filament of warmth

still drew me.

The dying sparks electrified the eye

with Grandma’s prayer

that fire could be passage

to some safe and blissful realm.

Blackening in the brazier,

these embers burned to utter

one final, ardent wish,

last incandescence

before the ash.