The limewash blistered from the chapel ribs, revealing older weather underneath. Someone filed the faces from the saints, left every pair of hands untouched. A moth drank through the binding thread. The pages held together anyway. Nothing asks permission once it learns the taste of years. Don't call it mercy. Mercy has clean fingernails. Don't call it ruin. Ruin knows exactly where to stand. Lay your name beneath the grindstone. Let it lose its corners first. Every mouth becomes a window once the teeth forget their work. The orchard bent without the fruit. The branches carried weight enough. I found a bell with no tongue. Still, everyone looked upward. The rain stitched mineral into glass. The glass remembered only pressure. Nobody noticed the house had been leaning for generations. There is a patience inside iron. Not kindness. Not anger. Only waiting longer than breath. Lay your name beneath the grindstone. Leave the dust. Keep the weight. If tomorrow needs a witness, let the walls grow one instead.
