Schmuckumentary

You know a place—
a garden enclosed by doctrine,
stone arcades holding the day in place,
where centuries have learned
not to speak,

a courtyard thinning into dusk,
where light forgets its edges.

A chapel starves the air nearby.
Doors open like a wound of gold.
The choir rises,
each note a hand
trying to reach heaven.

We pray,
leaning into each other,
tongues learning a language
older than gospel,
older than the first stone cast.

The priest
is shaping God into sentences.
A body is being named holy.

And here—
here, we unname ourselves.
Two men in the half-light,
touching what will not be exorcised,
will not be forgiven.

Someone else once led me here—
a voice that said,
you have to see how dusk gathers this place.

Do this in memory of me.

This courtyard keeps its secrets
like a chalice—
passed from mouth to mouth,
lips remembering
what names try to erase.

The hymns swell.

I stand between two altars:
the one lit in candles,
and the one lit in memory.

Tell me—
which one have I betrayed?

This is my body.

I almost answer back:
so is this.

So is this trembling,
this refrain.

My spirit is willing.
My flesh swells with belief.

This is my blood.

Consume—
not wine—
but the salt at the wells of your throat,
my mouth there,
where your pulse breaks open
against my tongue.

If there is a God here,
He is either learning
or being replaced.

The primitive theology:
sin
is the body insisting
it was never meant
to be alone.

Forgiveness is dusk—
arriving anyway,
slipping past the cloisters,
until even stone
forgets what it was built to forbid.

Let me sin—

Let me sin
the way light lingers
on stone—
touching what others have touched before,
and still calling it
beautiful.

If this is a prayer,
let it end like this:

again,
again,
again—

until the courtyard itself
can no longer tell
devotion from desire,

until even these walls—
trained for centuries
to witness restraint—

fail to hold.

The mystery of faith.