Volume 3 Issue 1: Origins
Our Lady of Sorrows
is what the Church calls you, Mary,
you with your seven great pains,
poised like piercing daggers to your
heart, left naked in the cavity of your
open chest, ribs parting like the sea.
​
Mary, let me tell you
what a modern Mother’s
sorrows are. Mary, let
me tell you a bit about
who your Son died for. Mary,
let me tell you about God.
​
I.
I was once fashioned perfect, sinless, made
in God’s image, Her most precious child,
cast away from the warm embrace of
Eden; seduced by temptation—
which, at that tender age, was as innocent
as a cookie smuggled from the tin.
​
II.
The Garden withered, the Earth stark,
God commanded me to build an ark.
Fingers wood-splintered, I filled the boat
wall to wall, brilliant medals, shimmering gold
plaques, but when God sent the flood, my ship
sank from the weight of my trophies.
​
III.
Fearful of a second torrent, brick by brick
I built Babel, standing proud and tall. But when
God learned of my tower, She confounded
my words, cursed my tongue; She spoke
“Shobkichur ekta shima thake” but I
could only ask “Could you repeat that slower?”
​
IV.
Hunched over the dining table,
quavering at the tap of a slipper by
my math homework, I scribbled the answer.
I was wrong. And God sent
pestilence, a plague of locusts, and
killed every firstborn child.
​
V.
I walked across water, made miracles,
and God tricked me by sending Judas—
He whose love was so deep, safe as the
starlit canopy of Bethelhelm where
a child was born. God sent Judas
to betray me with a kiss.
​
VI.
I learned, too slowly, you cannot run from
God. She is everywhere, omniscient,
and when I first tasted pleasure, She
spoke to me in thunder, screaming
in an unknown tongue:
“Who do you think you are?”
​
VII.
I knelt to pray, and God demanded me to
confess. Holding my ears, I begged
“Forgive me” in a language she did not speak.
God, in Her untouchable, divine retribution,
was at last silent to Her most
faithful devotee.
​
I met the Devil, Mary, once fashioned
perfect and sinless, too. At our Last Supper,
we broke bread, drank wine, and we wondered:
If God created us in Her image,
why could She not have made us
someone She could
love?​​
​
​
Conception
Life on Earth began exactly
once.
​
In the womb of the ocean,
3.7 billion years ago,
as a myriad of microbes.
When you first borrowed
a cluster of carbon atoms:
that was you.
​
Life on Earth began exactly
once.
​
In the dank shadows of a cave,
2.5 million years ago,
as a squealing infant.
The ceiling drawn with pictures of beasts
in ash and animal fat, your palms red-ochre,
you press your hand there, too.
​
Life on Earth began exactly
once.
​
Stemmed from the branch of a tree, yesterday,
as a caterpillar-bitten leaf.
The ground frosts over
and you wilt and fall to forest floor to begin again.
​
Life on Earth began exactly
once.
​
And soon exploded into
seven billion people,
some in museums right now,
where you stare at a stone tablet
you carved a handful of lives ago,
reading books you don’t remember writing.
Life on Earth began exactly
once. And hasn’t begun since—
but folded in on itself infinitely—
all superimposed, serpent-coiled—
you are a king,
a peasant,
a worm,
a doe,
a flower—
​
Life on Earth began exactly
once. And hasn’t begun since—
You are the next-door neighbor, shuttered away,
you are both a mother and a child;
You are a piece of a planet that was born today
and witnessed itself for a while.