Ritual of the Spirit

Most nights the spirit that lives
in the cathedral cavern of my chest
wanders toward the echoing ritual grounds
following the breath to the bodies and bones
left alone to shine white under the moon
next to marble and cold stone.

She has carefully tethered herself to my heart
with a fine thread of metal stretched thin
with trust and beauty so that she might find her way
back to this place of blood
if tomorrow she must still search for love.

The nights can be dark and so quiet when she slips away
into the stars past the windows of my sad silent chamber.
I have seen her go, dancing toward the dead,
to practice the rituals of love again and again like a child
learning to trace letters into words of poetry,
or anger learning to scream into nothingness,
or like the heart opening like the pupil of the eye will do
to adjust to the lack of light—
letting in the meager offering
as if it were nearly midnight
on the longest day of the year.

She opens her arms to the breathless, the hopeless,
and welcomes them into her bed, warmed by fires that will not die
and each night burn as sacrifice to the most holy
and tender acts of unconditional desire.