We came in with clean hands and old books under our arms. Salt on the cuffs, snow in the seams of our shoes. The room held us like a secret held too long, then sharpened every glance, every pause, every beautiful mistake. You could feel it then — the shape of the fall, how the bright thing in us leaned toward the dark. Beauty is terror. Beneath the marble, we keep it. Beneath the marble, it breathes. Beneath the marble, we keep it and call it grace when it bleeds. Glass on the table, dry mouths, Latin dust on the tongue. We made a chapel of wit and a feast out of hunger. But the count never felt even, not in the body, not in sleep. Something kept turning under the skin, under the keep. We broke beautifully. You could feel it then — the shape of the fall, how the bright thing in us leaned toward the dark. Beauty is terror. Beneath the marble, we keep it. Beneath the marble, it breathes. Beneath the marble, we keep it and call it grace when it bleeds. Now the silence has a weight — a weather, a witness. And every careful sentence comes back with its knife out. “Forgive me for what I did, but mostly for what I didn’t.” I know what we became in that bright, barred room. A circle drawn too neatly around a door that stayed closed. Beneath the marble, we keep it. Beneath the marble, it breathes. Beneath the marble, we keep it and call it grace when it bleeds. We keep it. We keep it. Beneath the marble. Beauty is terror.
