Marionette

I sit where they sat before me, knees folded like pressed flowers, hands stitched together by someone else's threads. The air is thick with the ghosts of breath, the weight of names I do not know, the hush of mouths shaping syllables like fog on the glass. I open mine too. The sound comes but it's not mine. It floats up to the ceiling and gets caught in the rafters like dust. No one notices. The wine is warm and bitter, the bread turns to chalk on my tongue. I swallow anyway. I think I could slip through the cracks in the floor. I think I could curl into the lining of the hymnals, thin and fading at the edges, wedged between stories I was told to believe. I see my body from above- white dress, an empty cup, a marionette waiting for a string Someone pulls, and I nod. Someone pulls, and I kneel. The bells ring, and I do not move The choir swells, but I do not sing. The doors open, and I do not leave. Instead, I let go, a thread unraveling in the pew, a name whispered under breath, a shape dissolving into light.