I stepped lightly across the mahogany desk, leaving waxy footprints as I went. I was still swaying drunkenly after having my flame blown out. I typically wait longer after he finished working to leave my candelabra, but I had to hurry. Halley's Comet was flying tonight.

I jumped from the ledge to the arm of the chair, grimacing when the fabric left hatched indents on the balls of my feet. I’d reshape them soon enough.

Being sure to step onto the wood, I walked with my arms out, trying my best to be quick without falling. A fall from this height would be sure to break something; possibly my arm and back. The heating, reforming and drying would mean I’d miss Halley all together. I was only going to last a few more months, much less another seventy years.

I panted and looked to the window glowing with unearthly white light. Moonlight that filtered through the wood paneled glass highlighted dust that never seemed to leave the old creaking mansion of Master Dee in the countryside. I dreaded having to cross his thick ornate carpet in his study – my station – to get over there, but, just like every other night, I climbed down the carved chair leg and stepped in. It stuck to my calves and left indents. I took stretching steps, tentatively, to avoid losing too much wax. My diligent march continued until I reached the red lining and with a victorious laugh I yanked my feet out of the wool only for my wick to pull out from my inner leg, running from ankle up my thigh.

I fell hard to the wood floor and cried out sharply. My entire left leg shook and I couldn’t move from my half lunge position, holding myself up with trembling arms. I wanted to turn and sit, to look and see if I could reattach it, but my chest heaved.  

I squeezed my eyes shut, “I can’t do it,” and then I threw up yellow, melted wax from my core. This wax surrounded my wick while I was active to protect it, but to have legs we slather the wick to one side of our leg. Having it rip off I can only assume would feel the same as if a human ripped a muscle straight off the bone. I continued to quiver and felt wax tears and saliva drip from my face.

I began to sink to the floor and accept that I would lay there and miss the comet. My palms slid slowly across the floor, leaving white wax streaks. I would call for help and they’d fix me and tell me this is why I shouldn’t bother exploring the study. My torso began to touch the drying pool of vomit. They’d criticize me again for being fascinated with the stars and sky, a place I’d never go. My chest crushed the dried surface and the wetness oozed onto my stomach. Submission brought my eyelids down.     

   I heard the creak of a drawer open and I sighed. This was it. When they’d come and my night would be over. My life would be over. I listened to the footsteps, louder than usual, coming across the carpet and I felt indentations forming on my cheek.

“Hey, what’re you doing out here?”

My eyes flew open as I whipped my head around to look at who came. Many things threw me off in this moment. Firstly, that voice wasn’t the smooth, rolling voice of any candle. It was gravelly and cracked. If the voice alone was a person, it would dance with highs and lows and robust. Second, no candle could ever pass through the carpet that fast. Their legs would come off in chunks, shortening their life span, or they’d be in the same position as me right now. Worse still since they’d be stranded in the middle of the carpet and lose even more wax. My stomach heaved at the thought. The final thing to confuse me about the figure before me was how he spoke kindly with concern, not scorn I get from my sisters and brothers.

My breathing slowed slightly as the jump scare faded, only to quicken with my jaw slamming shut as the twist I made to look up at him sent a hot stream of pain from my ankle to knee and crotch. He knelt down and pressed a hand to my back so I’d lie back down, fitting the marks on my face back to the grooves.

“The comet.”

“What?”

I sighed, knowing that a matchbox wouldn’t know what I’m talking about. “I want to see the comet. It’s a thing that will happen soon, the only time I can see it. I need to get to the windowsill.” He looked up, then back down at me like he was judging me, but instead looked to my wick.  

Matchboxes – and candles too for that matter – don’t read or know much about what happens outside their job and station. They’re quite flirtatious and make sick unease collect like slime inside many candles when they give us fiery kissed at the hands of Master Dee, knowing full and well we won’t leave our job form to yell at them in front of the man. This was why shock made my eyes stay glued wide this matchbox that came to my rescue was gentle and only touched me lightly when he needed to. He rubbed a hand across the strip of emery paper on his chest and smoke jabbed the insides of my nostrils.

He kneeled between my legs and I felt the warmth on the inside of my thigh. I dug my fingernails into the floor, feeling them bend slightly. He noticed and hesitated.

“Does it hurt?”

I pressed my lips together. “Not as much as having my wick unattached from my body,” I snapped. I don’t know if he said anything in response, because at that moment he pressed his palm to my leg and I blacked out.

Being shaken awake is not the best way to come to after passing out from pain, but at least it was to a pleasant sight. The night sky was the richest shade of blue and speckled with pinpricks of stars. Despite my tender state, I laughed. Sitting up, I eyed the matchbox who backed up as I rose before turning back to the sky. He smiled a small smile, “I think you lied about it not hurting as much as the detachment,” he licked his lips and looked me over. “My name is Lund.”

I didn’t remove my gaze from the stippled image above me, “Akil. Did I miss it?”

“The Omet thing? Uh I don’t know because I don’t know what it looks like.”

“Comet. Its white, streaked, and goes across the sky.”

“Oh. No I haven’t seen anything li–”

I breathed in so sharply I thought the air cut my throat, but certainly cut his words off. I leaned out, entranced by this white ball that slowly moved in front of my eyes with a watery tail. In space it was hurtling past quickly to start its race for the gold again. I stayed perched there as it crossed the night silently, my eyes round orbs of awe. I might’ve stayed there all night, maybe two minutes, but I have no clue. Just once it was hidden from my sight I felt something drain within me. My hand, that I hadn’t realized was reaching out jerked forward and I felt gravity clasp my shoulders. I saw Lund reach out, but instead a gust of air pushed me back up.

“Careful, Akil.” The disembodied voice made Lund freeze with his hands out and mouth partially open. I laid a hand on his forearm. “Thanks, Windale,” I whispered. A wind current laced around my torso then disappeared.

“Okay what the hell kind of weirdos are you cand-”

I flinched. “Stop yelling!”

Lund took a deep breath. “You know, I was really blown away by you, sitting here being utterly amazed by something that lasted five minutes, but that is the last thing about you that I don’t understand.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I know. That was the wind. It’s alive and my friend. Their name is Windale.”

“Isn’t that a bit ironic? Being friends with the wind when you’re a candle?”

I pursed my lips. What a rude thing to say when you know they can hear you. Or maybe he didn’t know. But Lund kept talking.

“I mean, I think it makes more sense for you to be with someone more suited to your job…”

Something churned in my core as I realized Lund was probably like all the other matchboxes, but when his smoldering hand came to the back of my neck, slinking up to my wick, something burned more than just his fire.

After that night, we would sneak hand in hand, cardboard and wax, across the floor to the windowsill. We would talk and he’d often light the wick upon my smooth head. I told him how the master is an astronomer, which means he studies the stars.

“Wait really?!? Like you?”

I laughed. “Yeah! That’s how I know all this. I read his books around the study, but since I’ve read most of them I just watch the stars like he does. Didn’t you see him watching the comet too?”

His eyes widened and started ranting about how it was stupid to open the window if we could’ve been seen. I guess he forgot that he was the one to open it.

He told me how he loved me and then we’d light and go back to our stations, him with my shine on his box and me with memories scorching deep into my molten core.

“You know,” Lund said as I was stepping down onto the arm of the chair. “We could have more time together if we just stayed here at the desk.”

I looked back up at him. “But I love the stars. I look at them every night.”

“Yeah...but we waste half the night trying to go over there and then have to come back. You are so…delicate.”    

I wrung my hands together and looked back and forth between the white window and Lund. “Okay…”

He grinned almost as brightly as one of his matches and picked me up, gently without breaking my wax, and we sat on the desktop.

I looked over to him as he fiddled with a match in his boxed chest. I watched with brown and black fingers caress it. “What do you do when you run out of matches?”

He shrugged. “Borrow some from my brothers and sisters. The master is the only one who uses matches because I can light you with my hand.”

“Oh…right, okay.”

“Also, switch out with one of your sisters. You’re melting too fast.”

I jerked back off his shoulder. “What?” I looked down at myself. I was smaller. For several days I had been melting in loving embraces from Lund as well as during the day when Master Dee lit me to chart stars. My arms were nearly as thin as his matches and I was shorter. I started to cry, wax dripping down my face.

“No! No, don’t cry!” I leaned into Lund, expecting his comfort to fill the emotion that felt sunken in my chest, only to be slapped with hurt when he pushed me off. “You can’t cry,” he said. I looked at him dumbstruck while he clenched his fist.

“Akil you can’t be used by Dee, you can’t cry or go across the carpet. You can’t do anything that will lose wax.”

“But...why? I won’t be living then just…existing.”

He ran a finger across his emery and traced it, smoking, up my neck. “Because you’re mine. I want to have as much of you as possible…”

When his finger reached my wick, it hurt this time.

For days the darkness of the dust-thick drawer drained me of energy. I was locked in with my brothers and sisters while at night Lund would take more of my wax. They didn’t see how I flinched when he touched me, only the glow I felt inside whenever we kissed. But this was only his glow. I grew weaker and thinner like my siblings all did before Dee re-melted them to form a new candle in the family. I did my best to roll away when he searched for a match to light my sister, Patrice. He picked up Lund and carelessly tossed him back into the drawer.

He was still a box when he left Master Dee’s hand. My eyes locked on the still open box with a neat row of matches half full.

He was still a box when he hit the drawer floor and raised a typhoon of dust molecules swirling like kids caught in a wave. Tip toeing towards Lund, I saw none of the candles close by were out of their form either.

He was still a box as I snatched a match from his box.

I scurried into the crowd of my siblings in the shadows where they didn’t bother with the job form. I trembled while I held the match to my chest. He felt it. I know he did. These thoughts felt like claws on the inside of my soft head, stripping off thin lines of wax to collect. I imagined it clawing through my dried seal skin and out would snow the shaven slivers and horrible worrisome thoughts. I curled up in a dark corner behind a cobweb that I prayed he wouldn’t come to.   

     I panted. We didn’t have hearts, so instead of pounding aches in my ears and chest like humans, I felt a storm brewing in my core. I’m going to throw up. My stomach pitched and I bite down on my lip and swallowed the slime that slide up to the back of my throat.

“No,” I whispered. I couldn’t make him angry. He might find me. If I threw up, I’d gather it in my palms to swallow again. But that might make you vomit even more…

As my stomach shoved the soft wax up my esophagus and into my mouth, I slapped one hand over my mouth. It pooled into my cheeks and a drop slipped between my lips and into my palm. Holding my stomach, I swallowed once more.

Lund never found me behind the white swath, but instead my brother Grem came and sat by me. When I was first put in the drawer, Grem got in a fight with a matchbox and has forever hated them.

“Cocky bastards,” he spit through his teeth as they laughed at him, a smoking match in hand that had been shoved into his side. We’re thankful it missed his wick; otherwise he couldn’t walk or transform.  He sat next to me and I did my best to not look at the hole in his side where he was burned. Grem refuses to have it filled, but no one agrees with his hatred towards matchboxes. Maybe that’s why he kept it.

Grem curled his hand in mine and I knew that he understood I didn’t want to be with Lund. I longed for the sky.

“Do you think I can leave?” Even though I whispered, my voice still cracked with despair.

Grem shook his head and sighed. “No. You can’t. If you ended it he would end you.”

I choked on a sobbed and begged what to do.

Resting his head on top of mine, he asked a question in response. “Why’d you take the match?”

“Because he’s taking me. I wanted him to know how it feels.”

I knew what I had to do and turned to whisper in Grem’s ear, though we were probably alone.  

“Can you distract him so I can go out? I just want one night. Please?”

I couldn’t see him nod in the dark, so I took the squeeze he gave my hand as a yes.

The drawer was always left cracked and my anorexic body slipped through easily, tightly gripping the match. I seemed to float as I crossed the carpet, going slowly, knowing I had all the time in the world. Even if Lund did shake Grem, it wouldn’t be until after I was already halfway across and I could get it done. I took the time to appreciate my wax for what it was, even if there was little left. The carpet went up to my hips and felt good sticking to my skin. The spriggy wool had many bends in it, but only individually, not as a whole. Many small things coming together make it strong, even if individually it’s fragile. Similar to how the stars are only incredible when they splatter across the sky, whereas a single star or planet by itself is lonely.

I dug my fragile hands into the curtains and climbed up to the window sill. Looking through the glass tainted with condensation, I saw Master Dee gazing up at the stars.

I curled my lip and pressed my hands to the glass. “‘It’s stupid to get caught.’” My tiny arms trembled trying to open the window and after only a baby’s breath of fresh air washed my face, I fell to my knees panting. “Windale?”

The window opened in the wind as if an invisible hand had pulled it.

“Oh my friend…” Windale whispered.

I lit the match by scraping it across the windowsill and held it up to my head. I felt the last of my wick light and I heaved a sigh. My core shuddered and I seeped into it, into the wick, up to the flame. Everything began to burn. Red flashed with fervor like fingernails on the wet flesh of inner eyelids. Orange whipped back and forth and my chest was ripped side to side similarly in my pliable skull as if a cape in the wind. It burned it burned it burned it burned it burned…

Then I turned into something husky. I am a wisp from the mouth of a smoker. I am the love of carbon and oxygen’s sex; unfurling in the sky, becoming the sky. I rose into the air and felt Windale shape me into beautiful swirls. I was smoke. I was sky. I was dancing through the air, closer to the stars than I’d ever been. Windale held me; I was one with them.

“Isn’t it ironic,” they said, “how the friend that made your purpose futile ended up saving you?”

I smiled. “Isn’t it ironic how I’m happier not fulfilling it?”