Petition

In the temple, a pear blackens in a statue's palm. Birds steal the grain. A man climbs the steps holding his severed hand, but no miracle occurs. His body refuses to reach out and claim what it lost. A woman in a white dress waits to be overshadowed as she plucks her eyelashes—one for the horses, one for the rain, one for the hair on the back of her lover's hands. She wants her virtue restored, to return to a morning when her skin was new and unwounded, when her mouth still fit her mother's breast. You came to ask if it's true, if angels weep until their faces become human, and if the dead can escape their tombs, then— You trap wind as it enters the statue's mouth, and command it to rise, walk.