Epektasis

He stood before the icons.
The room waited.

Morning light,
thin as dust on glass.

The book lay open
where it always did.
Thursday.
The cupboard stayed closed.

Wax softened under his fingers.
The wick bent.

Hunger kept its hour.
His mind went ahead of him—
kettle, keys,
a sentence from yesterday.

The words came back
without warmth,
set loose by the mouth,
by years of saying them
while thinking elsewhere.

His lips moved.
His attention stayed behind.

For a moment
the rhythm returned
and his mind stalled,
as if the sentence were there
but would not carry its weight.

He stood between candles,
between faces fixed in blessing.
Nothing objected.

Halfway through the prayer
his hand reached—
by habit—
for the refrigerator door.

It was already open
before he understood
what he was doing.

The icons remained themselves.
He closed it.

He began again,
slower.
Counted the breath,
the drag of wool through his fingers,
the small resistance
when the knot arrived wrong,
the brief argument
between tongue and breath.

Sometimes—
no one watching,
nothing worth repeating—
the prayer held
for several breaths.

Not steadily.
Not for long.

When the time ended
he stopped,
hands faintly tacky with wax,
breath uneven,
something tight behind his ribs
that was not relief.

The silence did not follow him.

He stood a moment
with the book still open,
waiting for the room
to say more—

and it didn’t.