The Fractured Loom

At dawn, we raised foundations—
stone laid on dream’s soft edge,
hope etched upon cold marble's ledge;
a breath held, a whispered prayer,
a first beam cast, a promise suspended there:
something sacred, reaching bright,
something beautiful, pooling first light—
a pattern traced before the slow fall,
untouched by time's insistent crawl.

The sky, a silent Keeper, watched it climb,
blessing dust motes drifting outside time;
through morning’s gold, a quiet song seemed poured,
a fragile harmony, faintly adored, ignored—
praise sighed to columns finding their slow grace:
hymns carved in ivory's waiting space,
pure, seamless, whole before the coming break.

The archway breathed invitation, vast and still,
the silence, reverent, holding back the chill;
a hushed wonder, fragile as spun dust,
of dreams untarnished, before the bloom of rust,
of worship received, offered, trusting, true,
before the first hairline fracture whispered through.

We worked with trembling hands, faith fierce and frail
(scarred hands, perhaps, beneath denial's veil),
aching for the start, a start, anything, please,
the baby, the bathwater, the slate wiped clean.
We scored belief upon the air unseen,
etched longing deep on every surface bare,
blind to the flaw coiled waiting in its lair,
deep in the stone, deaf to the hollow, warning sigh
that whispered where all hope learned how to die.

We saw each statue we sculpted, placed,
from clay, with hands, given fervent belief:
saintly, poised, pure, perfect in promise,
seemingly secure, truth held at bay,
the shimmer we embraced.
A single thread of hope, brightly placed,
unwoven, trembling, not yet tallied by
the Loom Eternal's vast, indifferent eye,
its cosmic weight, its dispassionate might,
against the fragile echoes of our dark, our light.

We dreamed a world and pulled it into view,
and it felt realer than the sharp truths we knew—
so long as we knelt inside its gilded reach,
so long as we loved that hologram-lit breach,
projected by our need, sustained by force,
eyes fixed ahead, denying the slow course
of quiet, where the void began to creep
and claim the fragile secrets we would keep.

It felt real. A comforting illusion's grace.
More graspable than grief we couldn't face.

We did not sense yet how the marble yields,
how deep the stone remembers broken fields
of faith; how temples built on fading cloud
must bear their weight in whispers, never vowed
aloud on stone, but sighed on currents thin and grey.

For now, the cathedral climbed: brave, bright, day by day,
innocent, radiant beneath the far,
cool gaze of dawn—a patient, watchful star—
that had seen this fragile pattern traced before,
and held its silence, waiting by the door
of knowing, like a breath held tight, unspent.

It knew. The Weavers watched. Measured. Observed.
Consented–not to weave, not to cut–simply to witness.
Assented. Knew when you stood in its final glance,
when the Loom’s gaze found you, breaking the trance,
you'd open your eyes, taste dust and ozone sharp,
draw breath into the hollow, acrid like bliss, hearing the harp
of silence finally snap—at last seen—
and you’d become real,
anchored,
named,
keenly defined.

Realer, perhaps, than what we'd first designed;
more fractured, yes, but finally,
truly aligned.