Covenant Bed

I began to long for you
and called it prayer.

Is prayer itself longing?

Is loneliness a sacred discipline?

Is abstinence
devotion to suffering?

Your body is my favourite scripture.

Your poetry was only
ever a weather report
or distress signal.

I stepped into an avalanche
thinking it was cloudfall.

Magnificent was the one
who collapsed my heart
like a cathedral
in beautiful defeat.

Now nowhere feels stable,
least of all prayer.

And now I have no faith
to wager on God’s mercy,

or doubt enough
to leave this covenant behind.