the body is a small church i visit to remember you by Lemon

some nights i kneel not in prayer but in ache

and tell the ache it is sacred. i say: here,

let me offer you this silence,

let me light my chest on fire and call it a vigil.

i love you like the old saints loved their suffering—

with a kind of vicious joy. with hunger

that refuses to starve.

i don’t know god

but i know how your name feels

when whispered in the dark—

like confession, like wine, like the first honest thing

i’ve said all week.

you, who are too holy for metaphor,

who i compare anyway

to psalms and plagues and

the way light spills through stained glass

as if trying to apologize for the sun.

some days i believe in you

more than i believe in breath.

some days, that feels like enough.