7.9.10

exiled, we penitent come

she spoke through the switch
grass and looked up
at me. words like yesterday
pass and sing and scratch
at the back door, whining,

wanting the door to open but not
wanting to come in.

she came in and i didn't hear
the glass break on the table
or her nails across my back,

feeling the chalk on the blackboard,
and my tired eyes, wiping away the dust.
she forgot to whisper, like the time

two years ago in the cathedral
we sat as the father stretched
his eyes toward adam and our lord
and the stained glass-

a virgin dressed in shades
of red, and her mouth pale,
waiting for a kiss, and wanting-

she wouldn't look,
not at me, not in the eyes
but then it's funny, isn't it?
the way eyes can turn a man
to stone. can turn a man.
her hymnal rested red in her lap, almost black
and unravelling.

the words never changed
so fast or so empty
as when she spoke,
penitent and unforgiving,
into the palm of my hand

we cry, poor, banished,
children of eve.

the father raised his eyes
from the heavens
to her

i raised my eyes from her
lap and the hymnal, the words
a stagnant pool, and my arm
floated to her cheek
and the tear, black
on white.

white dust fell, not like snow
in the middle of december that winter,
dark with streetlights.

my hands were dirty then
and now as i wipe the dust
on the leg of my pants. she came in
when she didn't want to,
she only wanted an open door
and the smell of clean sheets.

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