The Wounded Chapel

Winter storm advisory:
Soft blizzard evokes stifling
feelings of cellar doors,
rotten cores, godless bores.

I and I sigh at sights of
shattered snowflakes melting
away already peeling paint
appearing like scabs on
an old chapel wall.

Christ's wounds have not
healed, holy blood pours
onto a pulpit made of
flesh and bone, bound by a
pastor bound by God.

We were to marry here,
The Wounded Chapel
that sits so delicately
atop the highest hill
overlooking a frozen valley.

I step outside to peer
at the empty gray sky,
as if the artist abandoned
this canvas, tossing away
oils, paints, and pastels.

Or maybe this emptiness
is deliberate. Deprivation,
withholding deep blue hues
that compliment the most
extravagant scenes at dusk.

These numbing nights are
longer without the pale glow
of starlight illuminating what
was once a dense forest.
Oh, how moonlight would leak
from the treetops and
spill to the floor below!

Memories and prayers clung to
like a scared child buried
in his mother's loving lap.
He turns to face father's
scorn, only to find in ashes
the burden he once adorned.

It was all too familiar,
waking up to blank realities.
Staring up at a dusty cross
from an even dustier pew
clutching my tattered bible.

To think it was all a dream,
to think we could be happy
hanging onto the gospels
of false prophets for we know 
salvation is Christ's concession.