carbon · the wood after, before it becomes ash
what the candle leaves on the wick. what the matchbox remembers of
every strike. the colour of the inside of a stove in kitchen after
winter, of a beam in the basement that did not quite catch.
char is the colour at the edge of every fire — not the fire itself, not
the ash that comes later, but the thing in between. you can write with
it. for thousands of years people did. in sometemple it lives in any
corner that has seen heat and survived it.
a slow black with brown in it. softer than jet. older than smoke.
the colour after a long vigil in which the lights were left on.