My foot lingers over the threshold–
My flickering heartbeat
Pausing at the entrance of the shrine
Where the shadows of the white dome
Fall like a cold hand
Quieting the pulse of the living
With the weight of the unsaid.
In the corner nearby
A man ties a green thread to the marble—
His shivering hands trying to tether
A knotted hope
To a small, hungry life.
My feet carry me across the blue tiles
Where I hear a woman whisper
To the red bricks—
She speaks as if the walls can hear,
As if her hollowed words
Could reach into her fragile home
And fill the empty plates to the brim.
Outside the doors sits an old man,
His beard studded with pearls of dew,
Mindless of the winter fog
That a graveyard city rarely harbours.
His fingers clicking against the beads
Of the tasbih;
A rhythmic, fragile heartbeat.
He is praying for the boys in the street,
For the roof to stay over their heads,
For the lights to not flicker out
Like his wife’s dying breath.
I stand still
A ghost in the periphery,
With my pockets full of minor shadows,
Feeling the shame of a heart only bruised,
As a child barters his last bit of breath
For a miracle I have the luxury to doubt.
The pigeons’ flight blends
With the stubborn hopes of a thousand prayers,
And I, a mere trespasser
In the Saint’s sanctuary,
Unclasp my hands and find them empty
Yielding to the silence of the stones;
With no grief heavy enough to stay.
Artwork by: Theodoros Ralli
