The dead, they say, hold candles for the living. For some, it is a sinister prospect. A will ‘o’ the wisp leading the unsuspecting to a fen-deep death. For others, it’s an unfulfillable wish, a promise of being, for the first time, on the inside where the goose is on the table and boots line the hearth; no longer a phantom at the window, something glimpsed out of the corner of an eye before it vanishes. And then there are the candles of those who were loved so much that the ground cannot hold them. They walk among us, illuminating the stones and roots in our paths and warming our hands in their candles’ sourceless heat. Some days this is the only thing that prevents him from dropping to his knees and clawing at his breast in grief. The thought of John escaping his January grave, if only for one night.