Upstairs in the stone church
at night, we gather once each month,
and not to pray. At the center
of the table, tiny cupcakes cluster
like an offering: light pink icing,
soft blue sugar, left untouched.
Instead, a circle of stories unfolds,
each of us reciting her chapter, so often
unchanged month after month
after month. We are a chorus of grief
in metal folding chairs; we are a collective
hush: here for the holiness
of being heard, for the echoes bearing
into the emptiness like a cathedral
of children, singing.
