A person must suffer to breathe the air—
which she did not.

I still remember wrinkled, rosy skin—
a life at its most sacred.

I was ten when she was born as if in clouds of words,
too high to touch  the earth,
trans-planet tied to

this planet, not her earth, my mother.

The words were ours; my un-named sister died,
as if in a half-spoon, as if I could
have too many sisters.

We found the words
EL SAVIOR bleached into the bottom of
the basin where they’d baptized her; where she
had ‘cleansed her tears’;
where the baby’s blood had run.

She had slept on a pillow of words…

I still think of her wrinkled, rosy skin.

—Sister Rose Theresa, in the year of our Lord, 2010