The Nameless Church, and a Tree: by Serbian

​   Co-Owner of the poetry page @cadavers.unknown. Serbian is a 19 year old poet attempting to make art about what it means to exist. 

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Across the street from hell lies a church.
Utterly unremarkable and forgettable to almost anyone passing by.
It’s wooden beams and grassy lawns home to no one ever seen. 

Except 

for us.

We commandeered it, made it our home. 

A nameless church with cracked white paint that coated the walls of our lives and filled those desolate moments with a fleeting high that allowed us to grow and laugh. 

Singing songs of who we wished we were as the sun beat down on us in contempt.

Glass shards littered on floors were we held hands and fought and cried. 
Imbedded into our feet so that the places we ended up are stained with blood from that bottle we buried in the dirt.

A red staircase that hid our secrets behind rusty bars that peeled at the slightest touch,
 adorned with cheap Chinese food.
They never gave us more then two forks. 
Still, 
we shared.
Making chopsticks from pencils, breaking the tines off forks so we all had a chance to eat. 

The chicken fights we had made me see the world from on your back. 
I remember the time I dropped you.
We crashed to the ground and I held you in my arms as I pulled you back up to your feet.

And the centerpiece of our home.

That tree.

Reaching to the heavens it towered over us, impossible to climb.
Draping upon us shade, peace, solace from the worries of who we were and the future that we would never know.

Sitting calmly on its roots, we talked about everything and nothing, like a dried creek that carries only sand.

It’s leaves impossibly sharp, sitting underneath and looking up I got lost in the vastness of its uncaring demeanor. 
Yet that tree held my love and hope. 

It held us.

That tree is gone now. 
So are we.

After all it bore witness to, the memories held within its branches and the emotion it store in its bark. Not even a stump remains to mark where it once stood.

Across the street from hell there once stood a tree. 
Now all that is there is a nameless church
That echos the dreams we sang.