This one gives more with each reading.
I might have a suggestion, if you're interested. I checked out your drafts blog as well.
How does this work for you - the drafts - do you tinker with them for a while and then send them out somewhere? Are you writing with a writing group or alone in a smokey pub?
Does your future book have a movement from X to Y?
Thanks for checking it out as well as my blog. I am very open to suggestions or critique, so, please. Drafting tends to be very erratic as far as process goes. I chew things over a lot and don't know that anything is finished. As for writing, I generally write alone in my room and very occasionally in public. I do ask certain friends to take a look at my stuff and I look at theirs too. I don't have any real direction as far as collecting poems goes, though I do have one unfinished chapbook based around paranoia.
I love the ending - of course we bring a lot of our own experience to a poem. I kept seeing this candle. but of course you are talking about candles each illuminated, never crossed. Why would I imagine a braided candle on one wick? Maybe that's what I wish it would be. First a question: when you use the word "tongue" in the almost last stanza - had you used that word in an earlier stanza in an earlier draft? Just wondering. More on this in a bit. also, line six... "the way" ... "the way"...
Interesting, "havdalah" means "separation." That opens up some more room to play, thanks lil!