The church of my bones keeps vigil in the dark,
candles collapsed into puddles of tar-black wax,
a moth beats its grief against the stained-glass truth.
I wear numbness like a winter glove: no ache, no heat,
only the indifferent pressure of absence at the fingertips.
Somewhere a bell that used to cry bends rusty songs into silence,
while pain, a slow fungus, eats the margin of my days.
I catalog the small betrayals: the sap of light that will not warm,
the way names dissolve on the tongue and leave a saltless taste.
Night presses its knuckles to the window of my ribs,
and I answer with a shawl of old grievances, folded tight.
There is a hollow where urgency once lived, perfumed by dust and iron.
I move through rooms like a rumor, colorless and sure,
learning how to be forever quiet and not collapse.