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The Optimistic Candle (Louis Toliver Jr - Swartz, LA)


Knifed in the back countless times. I still get up everyday. I face what is wrong with this screwed up world, making things right, shining a little light.  I refuse to live in fear. I choose to live in love.  Through the darkness of humanity, I am an optimistic candle.  

Sometimes, when I am laying alone at night in my bed I reach behind my back and I am shocked to find my blood on my hands and the pain that goes along with it.  If stab wounds were truth, I’d be dead by now. However, that ‘truth’ is just a lie because it is caused by fear. I am an optimistic candle and if I must bleed to death then I shall do it.   

Have you ever been in a dark room during a storm and the lights go out? How relieved are we when we get a candle lit and it brings light to our eyes? But have you ever used one candle to light other candles and the light grows?  The room seems safe because the shadows disappear and the door is visible.  It takes just one candle to light a room, how many candles to light a city? I’m not really sure but I am an optimistic candle.  

I never want to see the day that the light of those who seek to love or for truth shall dim or fade out. I know there are many candles out there and I hope they will come together.  I hope they at least try to light up a city, because I am optimistic candle. 

At times, my flame grows dim, at times, I think it will go out.  But I have faith that candles could be everlasting, led by the ambition for light.  As their wax melts down to their end, will there be other candles to light us? I believe so, because I am an optimistic candle. 

I used to think as I laid stuck to the harden wax I bled onto my bed that I would be recycled. As I waited in my dreams for a match to bring me back to life. But my reality, my truth, is that many candles have come to pass the same flame onto me as I do unto my children. I’m an optimistic candle waiting for the storm to pass, so the power, the light, and the truth will come. 

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