The Abbeys – Logan Edwards

I followed the vibrations to the chapel

expecting to be scorned by pews of real people,

the ones to whom god answers in a delicate dream.

Hit by the emptiness and a need to laugh,

listening to the organ sound in my body,

a chord hit below my sternum and released a cold breath.

I had to leave. I could not stay.

Never religious, only confused

because god does not live in the music.

So beautiful were the voices of the choir that echoed,

the glass stained but not broken, colorful and light,

the same church-chapel but in a new magnitude.

The bricks that built it create a whole city.

nothing is the same here. I wish I were changed too.

Another abbey on a silent walk is broken to pieces.

no god can be discerned in the rubble or the mist

but believers prayed here too, long ago.

The apples were easy to crush with my heel,

no organ to reverberate the heaviness

of the walls that stood and the walls that did not.

No noise pierced through. I could not bear it.

I wish I could speak to the banisters

and hear more than my own voice echoing back,

breathe in the air and feel the pressure break

my old life and bring me a new one.

If all were to blend together and uncertainty vanished,

if god were to live in my attic,

I would request an organ song and sleep soundly.