It's Still Life

Liturgy for the Window Vigil

I. The Geometry of Witnessing
A window is a frame.
Not for art,
but for the ordinary.
We think we are looking out,
but we are really looking in.

Into the small, sudden theatre of endings.
Where medics close a defibrillator
like a book whose final line
no one wants to read aloud.

II. Of Distance
What we see grants us
a kind of authority.
We measure loss by what is said,
what is seen,
what is texted across the gaps
between parted curtains.

III. The Ritual of Stepping Back
Grief has its own etiquette.
Obligation wrapped in old resentment,
a bouquet tied with ribbons
of what we never said.

IV. The Alchemy of the Kitchen
So we cook,
not to feed the living,
but to feed the gap.
The hollow where ceremony fails,
where words are too light,
where death feels too large.

Yet it arrives.
Through a window.

V. Of Truth
Grief eats everything.
It devours silence.
It devours decorum.
And pretence.

But grief pauses
at the scent of browning onions,
at the steam rising from a stirred pot.

In the kitchen, we are not a voyeur.
We are the religion
tending the altar.
That matters when words fail.
The offering of warmth,
the religion of something to hold.

VI. The Reveal
To those who watch from windows.
To those who cook when they cannot pray.
To loved ones facedown on the floor.
To those texting diagnoses from safe distances.
To soups and stews cooked for the dead
who will never taste them.

And most of all, to the understanding
that sometimes,
bearing witness
is the only sacrament we have left,
and cooking is the quietest way
of saying,
I see you.
I am here.

Even now.
Especially now.