Villanelle for the Unanswered Prayer

You do not answer, and I keep asking anyway.The silence has its own liturgy by now —the asking is the only prayer I know how to say.

I kneel less for belief than out of habit, they say,a debt paid down in postures, not in vow.You do not answer, and I keep asking anyway.

Some nights the not-knowing feels like a kind of pay,as though the waiting were the point somehow —the asking is the only prayer I know how to say.

I have kept every question I could not give away,stacked like unopened letters, one per row.You do not answer, and I keep asking anyway.

Perhaps you are not silent. Perhaps you are only far away,too far to send a word this small allows.The asking is the only prayer I know how to say.

So take this, then — not answer, only stay,however far, however you know how.You do not answer, and I keep asking anyway.The asking is the only prayer I know how to say.