Once, I built a sanctuary for you,
stone by stone,
with the mortar of trust and the glass of faith.
I lit candles in your name,
believing your presence was holy,
believing your words were pure.
But shadows crept through the arches,
their whispers wearing your voice.
The stained glass splintered,
colors bleeding into the dirt,
saints crumbling into faceless dust.
The altar cracked beneath the weight of falsehood,
and I was left kneeling in ruins,
hands empty, prayers unanswered.
False friends do not storm the gates;
they enter quietly,
draped in the robes of devotion.
Their smiles are soft as velvet,
their promises gilded like scripture,
yet beneath it all
they carry the silence of betrayal.
You were not my enemy.
You were worse,
the ghost in the choir,
the hollow echo in the hymn.
Your absence began long before you left,
your faithlessness written in secret ink
between the lines of every vow.
Now I wander the cathedral of memory,
its pews lined with ashes,
its windows nothing but jagged teeth of glass.
The incense of grief still lingers,
smoke that curls around my lungs,
a perfume of what was lost.
I mourn not only you,
but the version of myself who believed
the childlike trust,
the faith untested,
the hope that friendship was sacred.
All of it lies entombed here,
buried beneath stone and silence.
And yet
even in this hollowed ruin,
I light one candle.
Not for you,
never for you,
but for the lesson carved into bone:
that trust, once shattered,
does not resurrect.
That faith, once broken,
becomes a haunting.
The cathedral stands,
but it is no longer holy.
It is a mausoleum of what I gave,
what I lost,
and what can never return.
©️ Dark Water Diaries
Written in December 1999 - hard times for me. Lost two important people in my life. It devastated me for years.
