It was June but the church was keeping winter—

It was June but the church was keeping winter—

not the weather kind, which had gone weeks ago,

but something older, something the stone and timber

had been saving, something they didn't owe

the season. Third pew. The wood pressed my back.

My breath almost showed itself in the air,

then didn't. White carnations. A candle's slack

flame. My grandmother's face in the frame up there,

composed, and small, and nothing like enough.

I haven't been in a church in seven years.

I thought I'd feel resistant, feel the rough

edge of not believing. I felt cold. The kind that clears

the room of what you brought in with you—

assumptions, arguments, whatever case

you'd built. Just cold. Just the pew.

Just my breath, almost visible. Then not. Then space.