Lives of the Saints

After the offending bit is popped out these tiny stitches on your neck are exquisite. Lips of the slit don’t speak the way you think they should, break into stupid song, blow kisses at the doctor. Some piece that kept insisting on itself will spend a few weeks in a jar on holiday with strangers, stained and diced and separated neatly from its secrets. You can only wait, reading your book about the sex lives of the saints, the lance that pierced and then pulled slowly out of Saint Teresa’s heart. A slice is venerated in Milan, they say, an arm in Lisbon, a single breast in Rome; but her heart’s enthroned behind the convent walls at Avila. Pink under glass, it wears a tiny crown.