My heart is the altar,
a rough stone in a quiet room,
where I lay down the things I’ve carried
too tightly,
too long—
old vows,
unspoken wants,
the stiff weight of my own expectations.
I gather them like wood,
trembling and dry,
and place them one by one
on the altar of my chest.
There is no priest here,
no knife,
only the courage to release the shape
of the life I thought I needed.
The fire comes softly—
a breath,
a letting go,
a whispered yes to what is.
It flickers first at the edges
then burns through the tangled heap
of what I once demanded from the world
and from myself.
As it burns,
the smoke rises—
thin strands of prayer
ascending into the air above me.
And the air, that ancient air,
the avir ha-mizbeach,
grows holy.
For sanctity is not in the offering
but in the space it frees;
not in the flames
but in the trembling air that receives them.
And so I watch my expectations
turn to breath,
to heat,
to nothing—
yet not to nothing,
for they rise
and rise
and rise
to a place I cannot see
but can feel—
a widening,
a clearing,
a sacredness overhead
that was waiting for me all along.
May the air above this heart
remember what I surrendered,
and return to me
only what is true,
only what is needed,
only what can live.
For the altar is mine,
but the rising—
the rising belongs to God.
