I must surrender

all the colors of that place in time adorned with holly hocks, and chrysanthemums where my mother and father were younger than me, their sky-blue corvette, black revolvers and beagles— burned by chemical processes into cracked emulsions I cannot repair; a drawer of dead watches that have lost their war against unquantified time; pocket knives, blades of tempered steel ground down to impotent points and turned to rust; boxes of pencils sharpened to stubs, depleted by the manufacturing of words and diagrams lifted to sky in ash; all the promises I once made, attempts to do better. I keep reminding my hands that burning candles has nothing to do with the diminishing wax. They never learn about light.