There are girls in white along the wall,

with their painted faces watching.

Sculpted ones too—

marble eyes following me around the aisles.

Their names slip past me

before I can hold them.

Kneeling at the front,

my mind goes blank—

like a chalice left to dry,

parched and abandoned,

its rim cracked and flaking.

I murmur the litanies I should know,

but they vanish,

sinking into the emptiness between my lips.

The luminous panes flood the nave with fractured light

spilling red and yellow across the benches.

It falls like empty hands.

If I had looked closer,

would you still be here too?

I reach for the shape of you in the glow,

but your absence

is a weight I can’t lift.

Did you know I tied her shoes every day?

Buttoned her coat?

Made her eat her sandwich before dessert?

Those rules she pretended to hate.

She laughed with her mouth full,

Occasionally calling me “teacher” by mistake.

It waits, dark and silent,

narrow and suffocating—

wooden walls swallowing sound and light.

A door meant to close behind me.

I step inside willingly.

And I look the stranger in the eyes—

the syllables slur together,

foreign, forbidden.

My throat burns as I speak.

And I confess.

I hate God.

The sound of it lingers—

then the priest slams his book shut,

leather cracking through the silence,

marking what can’t be undone.

Sometimes,

when the books slam shut in the pews behind me,

the sound tears through that stillness.

Brief. Final.

Everyone rises, sits, kneels—

a rhythm I can’t follow anymore.

Then the silence returns,

settling like dust over everything.

I wonder who I interrupt

when I breathe too loud—

God?

Her?

Something I keep trying to name.

I pick and pick at my nails,

reciting the penance under my breath—

until they’re red like those windows.

Then I stick them in my mouth—

iron,

prayer,

the name

I can’t say out loud.

Maybe that’s where you are—

in the hush between the prayers,

in the air that shivers after the pages close—

waiting for me to listen.

What if we stayed here instead—

by the coloured panes,

you and I.

Trace our fingers along the cracked edges,

watch the light bend and split—

pretend it’s still beautiful.

The colours spill across your small hands.

They tremble under the shadow of what’s gone.

And somewhere,

behind the painted faces,

behind the sculpted saints,

I imagine her—

hair dripping,

hands reaching,

water pooling around her feet—

asking

if she can sit beside me at lunch tomorrow.