Sister Mary
She sat in the front pew like a first-chair violin.
Ready, waiting, ever waiting
for a sign from the Conductor.
The beads in her hands passed through fingers
that couldn’t have known hard work.
They were so soft and cool
against my cheek when I would fret,
and Sister Mary
calmly reassured.
There had to be something wrong
with a woman who didn’t want men
to think her pretty, or babies to rush to her
skirts with laughter or tears.
I had the urge to call her
Sister Mary Elephant
and I was scared it would fly out of my mouth one day
when I wasn’t
fully in control.
The other nuns sat scattered in the pews
like burly seeds resting on top of the ground
before the wind covers them with dirt.
It would be a good place for them.
In the ground,
covered with dirt.
They made me feel like I was in
the way, a penance they must attend to
before being given their rightful place
outside under the oak tree
where bugs crawled and rows of marble
stapled the grass.
No thanks, I’d rather go to Africa to hear the
silence of the Serengeti
and risk my soul for being lusted after.
Someday, when my skin cleared
and my chest grew.
And on a day when I was twenty-six,
I sat alone in a booth at a coffee shop
fretting over the last worthless man to leave me
just hours before
and the waitress talked in a low, sweet, heavenly voice
of loading rocks into a wheelbarrow in Africa
to make a road
by hand
and I didn’t see anything wrong with her.
