Set a single candle where no draught can hurry it, and let the flame do the work of forgetting. What the fire lowers, it does not carry up again.
This is a working of descent rather than destruction, for you do not feed the fire your grief so much as watch the light agree to sit lower in the world. Each ring the flame crosses is a threshold, and a threshold once passed cannot be un-crossed. To let the light fall is to practice the small, holy art of setting down.
The Working
- On the first night of the waning moon, take a plain pale taper and score it with a pin into rings a finger-width apart, one ring for each weight you mean to leave behind.
- Ring the base with a thin circle of salt, so the flame’s descent is watched over and nothing rises back through the smoke.
- Anoint each ring by touch with a little crushed bitter herb, naming under your breath what that band of wax will carry down into the dark.
- Light the wick at moonrise and let it burn until the flame has crossed the first ring, then pinch it out with wet fingers and never blow.
- Each night, burn to the next ring and no further, speaking the name of that weight once as the light passes it.
- When the last ring is gone, let the stub burn out on its own, and sweep the cold wax and salt out your door at dawn.
The Incantation
Down, little light, and lower still,
past the ring I will not climb.
What you carry, carry under;
leave it in the older dark.
I keep the flame, I keep the vow,
and let the weight go down.
Night by night the taper shortens, and so does the list you carry. When the wax is cold and swept away, the hands that scored it are lighter than the pin.