The Chapel Cracked First
Before parliaments fell or city walls broke,
Before wars blazed or truth became smoke,
The oldest betrayal split the nave—The first fracture born in
the holy enclave.The pews were polished, the choir trained,
But a silence thick as history stained.The
poor kept begging at the locked front door,
While gold dripped quiet onto marble floor.The preacher’s ring,
the children’s cold,
The pious smiles, the lies retold.Bibles closed before the need,
Sanctuary kept for power, not for creed.
The altar’s rot was subtle, slow—A trickle of guilt,
a letting go.Grace slipped out the stained glass seam,
Hope turned brittle, lost its gleam.The hymn’s last note hung in air,
Unanswered prayers just met with stare.They closed the church to all but fame,
Lost the plot, forgot the name.
And when the storm hit, the world broke wide—But faith had died long
before outside.The courts collapsed,
the laws gave way,But the chapel’s rot had led the play.Silence fell in sacred halls,The children
grown, the spirit small.You blamed the world, the state,
the war—But the wound began behind the door.
History will say the center failed,But every ghost in every nave knows the story well—The first
and worst betrayal, always unreversed,Before the city,
before the state,The chapel cracked first.