Not the candle itself, lit to cover the smell

of yesterday’s onions, nor the silver canister,

smudged with fingerprints, not its wick in need of a trim,

nor its flicker, only light in this shuttered room,

and never the color, wax dyed candy-apple scarlet,

more tart than spice, but the ribbon of scent—

thin tendril boring deeper with each breath—

moving me to a different stool at a different counter,

and my mother’s hands, just starting to freckle with age,

whisking cinnamon into a pot on a different stove,

my father on a ladder outside a different window

lifting lights onto the eaves, and my sister beside me,

dripping cinnamon oil onto pine cones strung to drape

around the tree, and that sweet, warm smell of winter

mixing with the tang of Taxol and blood drying at the edge

of her port—that ribbon carries the scent of a last Christmas

morning, raisin and cinnamon rolls on Spode dishes,

my father’s fireball-spiked coffee, presents placed

by my mother’s hands under the cinnamon-scented tree,

and that carmine and crimson cap snug on my sister’s head,

cinnamon oil woven into wool by her fingers, warming her

more than our cinnamon-sugar cocoa, and the lingering scent

of all the winter mornings before, stacked together,

stronger in this moment, and more sustaining,

than the grave-dirt musk that follows.