Before Anyone Wakes

At six, the city is mostly rain, gutters still speaking to the pavement, buses carrying their pale window lights through streets not yet accomplished. Inside the church, a woman lights a single candle for her son. whose name is now seldom spoken by anyone else. She asks for no miracle, only that he be remembered somewhere far beyond her keeping. The Eucharist waits in the tabernacle, while outside, the baker lifts warm loaves from the oven, and a nurse buttons her coat against the cold. Soon the doors will open. People will arrive carrying what cannot be seen from the street What cannot be accurately judged across the earth the names of the dead, the weight of the living Fear almost used up For now, only the little flame holds not an answer, exactly, but a place where sorrow may set down its bags and rest. where love, while weary, still remembered its own name.