At night the careful hands
of nuns tuck underneath poker-faced
hips, and braid spirals. Spurious
dry fingers comb, wrap around,
and memorize a lost art.
They rock quietly against the mattress
and dream of things
they will not do.
Outside the cloister
a milky statue of the Virgin Mary
stands. Arms
collected,
face cast down, shielded by
Botticelli’s wreath; under half lids
stony, rambling, the eyes breathe.
The marble skirt encloses other eyes,
petals too. While faithful prayer-sitters
speculate humidity,
the pedestal’s scalloped
edge embeds Mary’s feet
in Venus’s half-shell.
From inside the white-washed convent
the inhabitants rush to
genuflect in disinfectant and soap.
Too fluid
for focus, they stop, now
and then, to gaze through
the thick third floor
curtains at the statue below
where Sunday children touch
Mary’s stone breasts and place
potted roses at her feet,
wishing, wishing.
As young girls, nuns nodded
God’s halo around their hair
and lit single candles. When the mother
superior lifted their veils
she offered wax for sealing.
After the benediction,
like the newly
dead, nuns don
solemn white.
The only other color
they ever wear flows onto cotton
rags between
their thighs.
This stale aired extra room,
this end of a knot,
this jump into frozen water,
this daughter waiting for words,
every month,
it requires this cardinal leap of faith
for them to still
believe
they
are
female.
