Cathedral
I was rubble.
A once-burning altar blackened with ash,
the incense long since fled.
No light through the rose windows,
just glass,
shattered in silence.
It was the worst of times,
when even prayer dried on the tongue,
and God,
if He was there,
was quiet as a tomb.
My heart, once a sanctuary,
had been looted.
The pews overturned,
the holy water fouled.
I loved once
and the cross I carried from it
splintered my back.
Then you came.
Not as a thunderclap,
but a candle
lit in the corner of my ruin.
You did not recoil.
You knelt among the debris,
touched the stone
like it still held echoes of hymns.
You treated me like a relic,
not for the dust,
but for the holiness still buried beneath it.
You kissed the scars
like pilgrims kiss the feet of saints,
not in pity,
but in reverence.
And I...
I did not know
how to be loved without martyrdom.
I expected crucifixion,
not kindness.
It felt like heresy
to rest in gentleness.
To be seen
and not sacrificed.
But every time you stayed,
I remembered
Lazarus.
How love called him back
from a tomb he thought eternal.
So I rise,
slowly,
from my grave of grief.
The veil tears in two.
The light returns
through stained glass
reassembled.
And I begin
to believe
this, too,
is holy.
Even now.
Especially now.