A compliment starts with a few words. Yet, those few words carry significant meaning and weight in and of themselves.

The weight that these words have can bring warmth to one’s heart and ease to one’s mind. Through compliments we bond, form future friendships or vibrant memories.

Compliments are serendipitous. They occur randomly through time yet surge through the recipient’s being each time one is delivered. It serenades through the air like a dove chirping in the midnight and starry sky under the incandescent moon.

When all light seems lost and all else seems hopeless, a single spark is needed to reight the incendiary tinders. A single, insipid flame in the darkness, a single sliver of words in a torrential sea of agony, a single compliment among emptiness, it tears into you, forcing out your deepest, inner self, your hope. It seeks that feeling out relentlessly, like a stowed wolf, feasting hungrily and mercilessly until it turns that compliment into a blazing fire.

It bores through the darkness, incinerating it too. As the hope grows brighter and intensifies, all other dark feelings flee in an attempt to avoid its deathly touch, making way for greater feelings to flow through.

Alas, sometimes, a single compliment is not enough. Just as a single ember does not always incur a flame, it drily requires a small, helping hand. A short, strong breeze or a series of powerful gusts.

A helping hand to breathe life once more into the hearth’s dying light.