By Ariadna Muñoz

God crawls to me this way: On knees,
In writhing agony,
Imploring me to smother the misery.

The nuns left me alone to shelter el Santísimo.
Their virgin tongues tempt me:
Talk to him. He hears you. The vessel is vulnerable. He cannot be left alone.
The devil is hunting
him in this cathedral.
And I? Prey And I pray
I am twelve and I anticipate the devil’s presence in a pew behind me.
Am I the devil in this pew?

The moon is a stark-white holy eucharist.
held up to the midnight sky,
casting a single soft light
above the insatiable sacrament.

The consecrated host is naked,
feeble, pathetic.
In looming silence,
I hear distant hooves in the narthex
and god’s deceptive whimpers.

This is what Margaret of Cortona relished.
I am Veronica and my veil is a polyethylene sheet.
I am twelve and tonight I am Mary, impregnated and swollen.
I am twelve and tonight I am peccable Mary, in memory of universally heisted girlhood.
Violating canonical law, I exit the stained-glass purgatory and miscarry.

God as the face of a drooling dog,
God as coffee ground vomit,
God as inexorable consciousness,
God as Holofernes,
And I, Judith.