It's Still Life

A Samhain Haibun

On Samhain night she lit a single candle in the kitchen window, the way her grandmother had taught her: a flame for the ones who still wander. The air smelled of apples and smoke; the world had gone thin at the edges, and she thought she heard the old woman’s tread across the porch. A slow, certain rhythm of someone who’d never stopped tending the hearth. The candle flickered once, leaned toward the closed door, and the room felt full again.

candle’s small heartbeat
footsteps fade into still air
smoke carries the names