Failure of Discipline

I tried to rebuild.

Four days after Cornelius departed, I knelt before the crucifix, clasped my hands in the original configuration, and prayed.

The words were ash.

Our Father.

The Father, the Heaven, the fourteen years of scaffolding under both, all rubble, but I prayed, because praying was the first brick. A man laying one brick is a man who intends a building. I laid it yet did not look up to see whether anything held.