I like reading by candlelight.

It’s pointless, really, with electricity there eager to share its current down the cord and up the stand into the lightbulb in the lamp there on my bedside table, but reading by candlelight feels like dancing.

Flame, flickering. Letters, flittering. The book likes the waltz, but the fire prefers to tango, seductively spinning atop the wick —step, now turn, then dip— tempting the ink-bound phrase into a spin across the dance floor

only to leave him in ashes.

— thaddeus moore