Sanctum Without God

You did not ask for knees —
They found the floor themselves.
Not from command,
But gravity.

Your name became architecture.
Something vaulted.
Something echoing.

Something built to make small sounds feel holy.

I stopped calling it love.
Love implies warmth.
This was colder —

Like stone that remembers every touch
And forgives none.

There were no candles here.
Only a dim, perpetual dusk
Where breath rose visible
Like incense with nowhere to ascend.

You did not reach for me.

You did not need to.
Devotion is a self-inflicted posture.

I learned the angles of you —
Not skin.
Structure.

Where the ribs of silence curved inward.
Where mercy failed to echo back.

I pressed my ear to your absence
And heard something breathing —

Not heart.
Not pulse.

But a vast and patient stillness.

It wanted nothing.

That was the worst of it.

I began offering pieces anyway.

Sleep first.
Then doubt.
Then language.

I let my voice grow quieter
So yours — even unspoken —
Could feel louder.

There is a moment in worship
When surrender stops being beautiful
And becomes necessary.

I crossed it.

No flame.
No ruin.
No collapse.

Just a narrowing corridor
Where the self thins
Until it can pass through something
Too small for daylight.

If this is sin,

It is not loud enough to condemn.

If this is love,
It no longer requires two.

And if I am asked what remains of me —

I will answer softly:

Only the kneeling.

Krishh Biswal writes dark, philosophical poetry exploring devotion, ritual, and the erosion of self. His work examines the quiet spaces between faith, love, and absence. He is currently working on a poetry collection.