O, hip bone (yours) over thigh bone (mine) buttressing (cathedral-body night)
what we cannot bar. We will not gate it
(any longer): this pink bird of thundering (sometimes gorgeous), the beast undoing
what we’ve made: (a marriage in gossamer).
I never told you my great-grandmother stopped attending church. Our daughter sings
doxology at her window (open) so
the neighbors hear her glory. Two black-hooded nuns forced her (my grandmother)
to hit her brother over and over in front of the class
red marks burning (now) into all our arms. Sicut erat in principio,
when the word became flesh, the ghosted holy
over, et nunc, my plague-masked face (the woman you see), et semper, if we can
unbless (our union) make it newly feathered,
et in saecula saeculorum, (which world) any place we feel alive again, our skin
unharmed by wind by flame, by living (hand).