/You find me on the steps, knees bent,
all my promises having shattered on my tongue.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Only a lifetime has passed since my last confession./
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy, they said,
and washed me in their rivers, and smudged over me the incense and
ashes of their dead gods, and strangled me with beaded necklaces,
and thrust at me their glass and wood and silver.
/Ideas of salvation, begging for providence.
Waiting up for death. Imperfect contrition.
Whispering the only prayer I know: to be made clean,
only without repentance./
I remember a time when I would kneel and pray to paintings. My teeth
were wine-stained, and I grinned in every passing mirror. I lit candles,
wrapped bodies in silk and dirt, and ate only the flesh that could fit in
my palm. I took what I was offered—nothing more.
/Does it continue? Greed caught between my lips, shame
trapped in my throat. But please, if you can hear me: Let me know
a softer world. I have never believed in resurrection.
Only return./
But it’s been a long time now in the ether, and I’ve seen no more fire
and brimstone than what they strike for their own torches and pyres. I’ve
never known omniscience or abstraction. Infinity is immutable.
I received no mercy until I gave it myself.
/Nothing for certain, now, except want. Your life in my veins.
Let me drink from your cup. I’ll make myself small enough
to fit into your roughed-up palms. I don’t want transformation.
Only ascension./
My mothers returned for their rings, and they repeated refrains to
their bridegrooms, in white lace and rhyme: “I am come—I am come!”
Now to you I say: Indeed, I am come that they might have life,
and that they might have it more abundantly.
/Only this, nothing more./