If this life is an Unlit altar
I press my voice into the windless dark,
as if breath alone could shape an answer.
Knees sunk deep in brittle earth,
I offer silence where hymns once rose.

No fire falls. No veil stirs above me.
Only the hush of those illuminated stars
burning through questions
older than any creed.

Once this world felt held
a warm, unseen hand of meaning.
Now this endless sky stares back
these great eyes looking down: vast, flawless, and mute.

I build no temples, only marks in sand,
each one unseen before it's known.
A ritual of reaching
toward something that may never reach back.

Is this devotion or defiance
to keep shaping the shape of longing
when no hand returns the touch?

Still I rise,
not redeemed, not refused,
but marked by the gesture
of asking.