I blame you for everything –
I blame myself for even more.
I’m dumb and stubborn; you, careless.
I constructed a temple of you
Every word you spoke became a pillar
Every dream I dreamt held the
lofty ceiling
What I wanted us to have: scripture
My voice cried out alone from the pulpit
Light filtered in through
stained glass windows
but it had turned too blue to warm me
Everything was bathed in blue
Red doors should have opened in to such a beautiful place
but no one could enter
I could not get out
Nor did I try very hard I floated in the blue like water, arms stretched out
I took communion kneeling in an empty hall
And when the cathedral burned, collapsed
It shook the earth I was reduced to nothing
And I knelt in the smoldering rubble alone
Open air above me, no walls to protect me from the elements
Snow stung my skin in the midst of fiery ruins
melting to leave ash in the dry cracks of my face
I remember now –
I have never fared well alone. I don’t like being alone.
From dust to dust.
From ash to ash.
And I gradually rebuilt the temple
stone by stone
rocky and barren as the ground may be
I believe in sowing seeds where one stands.
The floor is no longer made of you, nor the ceiling
The pews are mine, and I gaze at them
from the pulpit
A space for me, still quiet and alone
though I sometimes open the gently swinging doors
and my friends come in to sit
I wish to fill this space with a choir
with music reverberating
And yet, the stained glass windows
are still scenes of you and us
Every memory – imprinted, depicted
Light shines through this backdrop,
the colors of the story washing over me
The rosy glow of the glass blooms into a fire when I
gaze into the light too long. The blues
freeze me to my core
It’s only glass.
I could punch through it make it shatter
make glass cascade
My fist would be bruised, bleeding
I’d look down in horror as blood dripped down to my feet
Maybe this temple has been destroyed enough
Perhaps this is the temple I am meant to live with,
in tentative, tense, harmless peace.
