venturing into another Italian worship shed in an incubated version of October simply to continue connecting the dots through all his magnificent dwellings one standing less tall foundations dangling like toes over the slate sea at Cinque Terre a cherry wooden box at the top of the tight stairwell takes donations for the flowers (not the fathers) for a change and I don’t feel guilt at the absence of my own clinking coins churches are always collecting carved into stone walls, the windows within curl with age on the right silhouette the glaring glow outside like hollow chunks slit from black paper snowflakes my mind is on other things I am stilled there, thinking I am better heard grasping the soft edges of a worn wooden chair in the lack of any polished pew I speak solemnly with the dead pulsing in the shade of this diluted bath of red wine light but otherwise, I am concise as a cold shoulder we’re not on speaking terms these days it’s as if I believe I could sing the blessings down in silence coax them out of the walls soaking up all that chilled dimness draw them out of a god who stood defunct and refused to stop the blade I’ve taken to candle lighting It seems a worthy tradition to make me realize how much more suffering this brimming world holds than just my own in the dozen or so other lit-wicks hovering on tiered stands filled in to make a lopsided version of some nauseating cake I am glad to not be there when they hush out in a puddle of wax and extinguish this uneasy kinship with the other wordless match-strikers I am always lighting candles in strange churches. I cannot seem to stop.
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