Ash Embers

by Al Konda

I didn’t write this poem looking for comfort.

Ash Embers came from a place where consolation felt dishonest — where warmth that asks nothing in return no longer seemed true. What remained was something smaller, harsher, and more necessary: a coal that hurts to hold, but refuses to die.

There are times when the world shifts quietly before it breaks. You feel it in the undercurrent, in the way familiar structures start to sound hollow, in the way old powers stir as if they’ve been waiting for permission. This poem begins there — not in panic, but in recognition.

What matters to me in this poem is not the fire itself, but the hesitation before touching it.

We don’t come to the ember as heroes. We come as people who know it will cost us something. Names will burn. Comforts will fall away. Parts of us we once relied on won’t survive the heat. I wanted the poem to admit that fear openly — to let the hand almost open, to let the fingers go numb before the choice is made.

Because transformation isn’t clean.

It doesn’t heal by restoring what was lost. It scars what it outgrows. And yet, something new insists on being born anyway — not from innocence, but from endurance.

The vow in this poem is never spoken aloud. That’s important. It isn’t meant for witnesses or approval. It’s forged in a place without maps, where even gods don’t get the final word. What survives there is not belief, but commitment.

I don’t think love is always gentle.

Sometimes it overthrows before it heals.

Sometimes it takes before it gives.

Ash Embers is not a poem about hope.

It’s a poem about courage — the courage to keep a small, burning thing alive when everything else wants to go cold.

Read the full poem and analysis tomorrow 03rd: https://alkonda.com/2026/02/03/ash-embers/

© Al Konda · The Poetry Elite