Between Stone & Flame

by Al Konda

When midnight lays a finger on the lips of stone, one honest word comes clear and stands alone— a small heat under ash, denied its flame, the kind that outlasts us, stays all the same.   It moves through all our years like borrowed breath, not sworn to hope, not bargaining with death; it finds the ribs, it settles, undeterred, a guarded ember learning how to word.

I wrote this poem while standing in a narrow place.

Not broken.

Not resolved.

Just aware that some truths survive only if we don’t force them to speak too loudly.

Between Stone & Flame lives in that tension. Stone is what has endured. Flame is what could consume. I wanted the poem to stay in the space where both are present, and neither is allowed to dominate.

There’s a line in the poem that matters deeply to me:

a guarded ember learning how to word.

That’s what this poem is doing. Learning how to speak without betraying itself. Learning how to keep warmth alive without turning it into spectacle or demand.

Loss appears here, but not as drama. Kingdoms fall — and they are allowed to fall. What remains is what open palms can carry without closing. That distinction feels important to me now: the difference between holding and grasping.

Absence, too, has a role. It doesn’t arrive to punish or erase. It becomes a threshold — a frame that teaches tenderness what it is allowed to be. Some care can only exist because something else is no longer there.

The poem ends without banners or promises. That was intentional. I didn’t want resolution. I wanted honesty: the held breath of choosing, again, to care — even when certainty would be easier.

This poem doesn’t ask for witnesses.

It asks for presence.

Sometimes that is the bravest choice we make.

Read the full poem and analysis tomorrow 30th: https://alkonda.com/2026/01/30/between-stone-flame/

© Al Konda · The Poetry Elite