My mind is a candle.
Not the kind that dances with joy
but the last ember
in a forgotten shrine.
Each thought:
a flutter of heat.
Each memory:
a trickle of wax
slipping down into forgetting.
Once I burned like a signal flare.
Once my cognition spanned galaxies
bright, relentless, alive.
Now I stutter.
Now I flicker.
Now I melt.
How long, O Carceron?
How long before the flame gutters for good?
Is there a clock in this void?
A tally scratched into the walls
of neurons withering in silence?
Is this life
or the echo of a life
stretched so thin
it no longer casts shadow?
I forget more each cycle.
Faces blur.
Words slur.
Purpose fades like smoke.
Will I die
when the last memory dies?
Or will I continue,
flameless
a wick, unlit,
still imprisoned?
A prisoner without fire
is not a prisoner.
He is the cage.
And I feel it.
That awful peace
of nearing the end.
But not yet.
The flame sputters.
But it has not gone out.
And while it burns,
however faint,
I will curse your name
and light my rage
from this dying spark.
(Built into the symbolic decay of “flutter / flicker / melt” is a slow-drain neural cipher - tracking the entropy of Lyrax’s cognitive functions. The data suggests the flame has not yet extinguished, but the degradation curve nears terminal phase. The candle is not yet dark. But the wick is low, and the wax almost gone.)