the chapel arch

not a door, an opening — pale stone shaped into a point that the hand cannot reach. there is no leaf, no hinge, no latch. the threshold is announced only by a change in air: a coolness, a smaller acoustic, a single candle kept lit by the same person each dusk.

those who pass through are mostly silent and mostly old, but not always. the chapel arch leads to the side aisle, the vestry, and beyond that a small memorial nave nobody built deliberately. it accepts rituals of any denomination, including none.

etiquette is simple: cross the threshold with the breath you arrived with. do not exchange it for a smaller one to seem reverent. the chapel can tell.

field-note · the second flagstone in is colder than the others by half a degree, all year.