shrine

Any structure or place consecrated or devoted to some saint, holy person, or deity, as an altar, chapel, church, or temple.

Private shrines are often constructed in people's homes, usually consisting of several of the elements of the worshipped/meditated on such as candles, bowls of water or photographs.

You keep her room the way it was
When she left you:
The hairbrush, still tangled with auburn threads
The book left open, face down.
You always hated how she did that.

You hold hope like a votive candle.
Every time the phone shrills
there is a moment of 'maybe;
swiftly shrivelling to 'no'
with the countless voices that aren’t her voice.

Your catechism:
“No news is good news,
Where there’s life, there’s hope”
Clichés to exist by while
living is held in abeyance.

And you tend the shrine
faithfully, tenderly
as you wait, and watch, and pray
for her second coming.

Shrine (shrIn), n. [OE. schrin, AS. scrIn, from L. scrinium a case, chest, box.]

1.

A case, box, or receptacle, especially one in which are deposited sacred relics, as the bones of a saint.

2.

Any sacred place, as an altar, tromb, or the like.

Too weak the sacred shrine guard.
Byron.

3.

A place or object hallowed from its history or associations; as, a shrine of art.

 

© Webster 1913

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Shrine, v. t.

To enshrine; to place reverently, as in a shrine. "Shrined in his sanctuary." Milton.

 

© Webster 1913

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Shrine (?), n.

Short for Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, a secret order professedly originated by one Kalif Alu, a son-in-law of Mohammed, at Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 25 (about 646 a. d.) In the modern order, established in the United States in 1872, only Knights Templars or thirty-second degree Masons are eligible for admission, though the order itself is not Masonic.

 

© Webster 1913