It's Still Life

Part 3, Liturgy for the Light That Was Not Ours
(One border that’s only another)

I. The Carriage as Crucible
The wheels sang agony in vowels.
Every jolt a verdict, every rut a reckoning.
We counted time by froth at the horses’ mouths,
in the shudder of their ribs.
Safety was Lyon, we whispered to ourselves,
the lie turning prayer by repetition.

The body knows nothing of destinations.
The body only knows:
still moving,
still hurting,
still here.

II. The Arrival That Was Not One
Lyon received us with mosquitoes.
They rose from the river like god’s own suspicion,
seeking salt on our skin,
exhaustion in our blood.
We itched ourselves raw,
scratching not at bites but at the realisation:

There is no arrival.
There is only another version of leaving.

III. The Festival of Light Wronged
They process in damp wool,
candles cupped against the dark,
a river of small flames,
each a promise to someone else’s god.

This is festival,
this is faith, they say.
This is faith dressed in wax.

The air snaps:
weavers’ hands cramped on looms,
children’s backs bent
as workers’ children thin.
Feel the distance
between who holds the flame
and who warms themselves at it.

IV. The Cathedral’s False Sanctuary
We slipped inside beneath the cover of procession,
two shadows in a river of them.
The vaulted stone received us as it receives all:
without judgment,
without welcome,
without warmth.

We lit candles anyway.
Not for saints,
not for mercy,
not for any god who watches from ceilings
while workers starve
and children sleep in the square.

We lit candles for the old ways,
that know light is not salvation,
only witness.

The one that understands:
some prayers are just a way of saying
I am still here.
I am still here.
Show me a sign.

V. The Wisdom the Cathedral Could Not Give
And from our deep, tired bones we knew:
There is no freedom at the end of a road.
There is only the next road, and the next.
The light you seek is not in Lyon.
It is not in any city.
It is in the small, stubborn act
of lighting a candle
when every candle in the world
belongs to someone else’s god.

VI. For Those Who Keep Moving
Hear the mosquitoes that found you in the dark.
Hear the workers’ anger, the children’s bent backs.
Bless the cathedral that did not welcome you
but did not turn you away.

See the small flame you lit anyway,
the one that asks nothing,
promises nothing,
but burns on,
despite everything.

You are not home.
You may never be home.
But you are here,
and here,
for now,
is enough.