One Stop Poetry

Sean McCormick provided that picture for today's One Stop Poetry Picture Challenge. This is what the image made me think of:

The childhood house,
torn down to a sprawl of stones,
has a doorframe
that contracts with cold.
Bitter enough to shrink
the room where the birthday boy
is blowing on trickster candles,
where striped wax melts
through singed fingers,
still he blows.

What ripples from that—
walls within walls
far from the only window still open,
ghosted curtains billowing into the light
alive with silver
from so many extinguished stars.