The Fire: A Tragic Poem

“Darling, snuff out the candles tonight before you retire.”

She smiled at her beloved

Her future bright

She’d picked out the dress

An ivory white

Ruffles and frills

Victorian grace

Piled up her blonde hair

Away from her face

The sofa she’d chosen 

To adorn their new home

Masterfully carved

A horsehair-filled throne

The drawing-room green,

With imported wallpapers

The finest of colors:

Scheele’s Green vapors

Their wedding set

Just before Christmas

She slept on their sofa

As she battled a sickness

And to lift her spirits

Her groom saw fit

To ensure the candles

On their tree were lit - 

She begged him remember

To snuff out the lights

Before he retired

To bed that cold night

But the mines were exhausting,

And how could he tell

That one lapse of judgment

Would plunge him to hell?

Alas, he awoke

To a stinging pitch-black

No voice to call out

As the fire drove him back

He barely escaped 

Through the window with his life

The flames would take

All, indeed, his own wife

But every night her spectre

Visited in his sleep

Dressed in her bridal ballgown

And he would hear her weep:

“Darling, snuff out the candles

Tonight before you retire - 

I’m eager to wed you, dear - 

We do not need a fire.”

Behind the Poem

I wrote this piece based on a prompt posted by Kimberly Woodruff on LinkedIn. She regularly posts interesting photos and asks her connections what the image means to them. The image originally came from @adjustthefocus on Instagram - an account run by photographer Marta Pilotto.

This prompt sparked my imagination for several reasons:

• The image felt Victorian to me. Right or wrong (probably wrong, to be honest), the dress and couch felt like they belonged in the Victorian era. Probably because it's one of the eras I'm fascinated by.

• I love Absolute History. They have a series about all the ways Victorians were killing themselves (unawares, in some cases). I found it interesting, partly because it intersected with death and dying, a topic I've been drawn to since my grandma passed away. There are a couple of allusions to the ways Victorians could die here.

• The look on the woman's face. The original Instagram post is linked above, but I don't have permission to use it yet, so I had to pair this post with the image of a single flame. But if you look at the prompt, she looks either profoundly sad or angry. I think both emotions fit the occasion in this case.

• Sadness is the leader of my emotions. It's not a bad thing, but when I watched Inside Out, I realized Sadness has been calling the shots a lot in my life. It used to be a really bad thing, but nowadays it just means I do stuff like write this poem.

• Christmas weddings are the cutest. I was married in the summer. The thing that mattered most - for me, the groom - was one of the best ideas of my life. But choosing a summer wedding was not a great idea. It was hot and I nearly passed out at California Adventure on our honeymoon. But Christmas weddings are adorable, and I wanted to make this poem tragic.

• I already want to revisit this poem. I like that artists sometimes create artwork years apart to show what they've learned. I want to do that with this poem, but with different styles. For example, a haiku. A poem that doesn't rhyme. (And so on.) What do you think - should I do it?

(Disclaimer: I don't believe in ghosts - but I do believe that we often dream about a person we lost after they've gone from our lives. And in that way, it can feel like "being visited by a spectre" even if they've already gone to eternity.)

Do you see anything else about this poem that you want to talk about? How did I do at conveying the image? Let me know in the comments!