I keep a candle lit for hope—its wax a slump of weary tears,
its flame a tongue that licks the dark but never licks my fears.
The night leans in, a hungry guest, to scoff at such weak light,
yet still it burns, that stubborn wick, though no one asks it why.

The storms I weather aren’t the kind that thunderheads announce,
but silent gusts that hiss *you’re not enough* through every doubt.
I tally losses like loose change—the love I couldn’t keep,
the dreams that frayed like secondhand, the sleep that drowned in grief.

My hands, once deft at building joy, now fumble at the seams,
yet stitch a patchwork *maybe* from the fray of might-have-beens.
For failure is a tailor too—it measures, cuts, and knows
the art of shaping *almost* into something that still grows.

I’ve worn my heart slick with the salt of second-guessed decisions,
let doubt, that pickpocket, rob my pockets of ambition.
But here’s the rub: the dawn still comes, though bruised and barely there,
to prove that even fractured light can split the blackest air.

So let the critics count my cracks, my lapses, my regrets—
I’ll add the sum of what remains, not what the void forgets.
For life’s not lived in integers, but decimals that climb:
the .03% of courage found long after closing time.

And when the math of living starts to colonize my bones,
I’ll plant a dandelion wish in cracks between the stones.
Let chaos come with all its zeros, let despair subtract—
I’ll multiply the tiny yes that whispers *Take me back*.