The Church They Don’t Talk About

    

The church on Southside hill still stands.

Nobody points at it.

Nobody explains it.

They just cross the street.

Even in daylight it feels closed to light -

windows dark as held breath

grass grown high enough

to swallow the steps.

I pass it slow.

In August the air thickens -

metal, mildew, something sweet

turned wrong.

Windows sweat.

Doors swell.

The whole place feels

like it’s holding its breath.

I knew it before it soured.

On Lincoln Street,

Mother’s hymns slipped through screen doors,

rose past supper smoke,

settled soft on evening.

That church throbbed with us -

fans snapping,

knees pressed into pine

worn smooth by prayer.

I believed brick could hold heaven.

The change was quiet.

Attendance thinned.

Windows stuck.

Harmony slipped

half a note.

They blamed money.

They blamed scandal.

They blamed the times.

Nobody blamed what had taken root.

Now the steeple tilts.

The cross rusts through its shine.

On windless nights the building shifts—

a long wooden exhale.

Inside, a Bible lies open on the pulpit,

spine cracked clean through,

its pages bowed by damp

as if even the Word

has been left too long in the dark.

I don’t look anymore.

I feel it notice.

And what unsettles me isn’t rumor -

it’s recognition.

Like the place remembers

the boy from Lincoln Street,

eyes lifted,

open.

Not fire.

Not demons.

Not spectacle.

But inheritance.

Rot doesn’t start in walls.

It starts in what you trust

without question.

Some nights, when the air won’t move

and even the crickets hold back,

I can hear the church breathing -

slow.

Patient.

Waiting to see

what in me

still belongs to it.

GBS jr

Malone, NY

2014