2/30: In which I build a church

The Church of the Year of the Split

I am tall
and so, I built the door taller. Me-sized. Tall enough
to make me feel small when I walked through, humbled,
the way doors felt when I was a child. That is, after all,

what churches are for. The first stained glass window,
naturally, is a scene, and it's you, the day
you walked into the room and found me there,
talking with him and in that moment you knew.
I was always good

at make believe, but I'm still afraid of the dark.
In this church, I have learned
how to knit. I sit beneath the window
with a scene of me in the weeks after you left, weeping

openly in public, and I knit enough sweaters
to clothe every cold orphan in town.
Beneath the image of you driving away
I taught myself to play the harp, and I wrote a dirge

that could only be played if we one day had
a double funeral, together, you and me, which of course
will never happen. The biggest window is the one that shows
me, the day you left. There I stand, holding the glass I found

that was yours, and it's written all over my face,
the fact that your beautiful hands held it last, that it's
your lip mark on the rim, your saliva mixed
with the swill. It is beneath this window I sit while I study

every language there is, all seven thousand that exist
in the world, looking for one
in which I can tell you I'm sorry.

((After a prompt by Rachel McKibbens: rachelmckibbens.blogspot.com))