╰ ‘ open to : anyone.
place : sanctuary church @ 7 p.m.
drifted past the chapel garden with her hands half - closed — fingers curled delicately, as though still cradling something once warm, now ghosted by time. an echo of a heartbeat, perhaps, or the last breath of a forgotten name. the marigolds bowed in her wake, petals suffering on their stems, golden faces dimming beneath her shadow. did you see ? they knew her still. they bent not in fear, but in remembrance — though she, pale and hollow - eyed, could no longer summon even the shape of her own reflection in their amber bloom.
marrow had fallen into silence. each time soles kissed the gravel, hesitant and halting, the town held its breath. her gait the kind you’d expect from someone wading through dreams not meant for waking life. the wind, a careless apparition, now bypasses the chimes, as if afraid to draw her notice. even the children — those wild, bright - eyed creatures — clutch their laughter like contraband, as though mirth itself might unravel if it brushes too near. and she — she moves among them like a specter dressed in sunday white, collecting their silences as one might finger rosary beads : slowly, prayerfully, each one a lull threaded between glances that flicker and vanish like candleflame before breath.
father romero, in all his gentled gravity, speaks of healing. of togetherness born from shared bread, broken like old promises and offered with trembling hands. he asked for dishes saturated in memory — recipes remembered in dreams, in grief, in voices long faded. he asked for hearts unfolded like napkins on the table.
she brought honeyed cornbread in a rusted tin, its edges crisped gold, its sweetness soaked in absence. her mother — twelve summers scattered to dust — had once sung as she stirred the batter. now the pan sat solemnly on the white - draped table. it sang when she placed it down : a soft, mournful note like the last sigh of a hymn. no one touched it.
she turned then — slowly, deliberately. the quiet deepened. her gaze, when landed, was not searching. it was final. her eyes were the still surface of water before the first stone is cast. and in a voice as brisk and sharp as frost cleaving the petals of dawn, she spoke :
“ i don’t like the way you look at me. ”
no tremor. no flinch. just a simple severing, clean as a blade across communion bread.
