Sister Magdalene had her own parking space
in the lot of the church where my grandfather
placed his hand on my shoulder.
Over the other, Joan of Arc whispered a joke
about the Father.
Something about bad breath.
I giggled a fragmented
Amen.

As a young girl I dreamt of the honor
of battle and the burden
of armor. Each morning I’d awake,
my wrist sore from painting fields
menstrual red. My thighs ached.
My horse's name was Gust.
She was the color of overcast.
Once, she got so tired
she kneeled. When she stood
her stomach held the night sky.
I laid beneath her and named stars
from bits of her fur
until the field began to whisper so loud
that I woke.

Sister Magdalene sat in the first row of pews.
Her skeleton hands held a candle. The flame
tip-toed up her habit with the resolve
of a field of corpses rolling their eyes
toward salvation. When the flame
reached her chin I bit my lip.
Joan asked what’s wrong
or what’s right.
My mouth was full.

The flame grew to reach the Father,
kneeling at the feet of a cadaver.

I listened to the church bend
in the heat until Joan begged that we leave.

You are the Titan of Tears,
Sobbing to the unforgiving milkman
Who breaks your ***** bottles
And feeds you curdled milk
From withering cattle.
He crunches around broken glass
With his scuffed leather boots on your front porch
As you watch from a hole in your bedroom wall,
Losing your first piece of dignity
And the last of the sanity carrying you since age ten.
You are the Titan of Tears,
Crying to the cutthroat poetess
Who refuses to send your estranged sister
A collection of misery soaked poetry.
She burns your insincere words in front of the mailbox;
Stanza by stanza the ash coats your mouth
Like lipstick for the ******.
Spiraling into smoke as she walks away
Fast enough to lose her in the midst of your fit.
The Titan of Tears—
You whimper in torn apart doorways
To block out strangers who will never appear.
You, Titan,
Who only feels clean when flossing
In the harshest of summer storms
Because you believe your great God is washing
Sins out of your matted hair.
You, Titan,
Whose childhood feels never-ending like evening traffic.
Childhood is the milky smoke you witness
Seeping from your dying neighbor’s chimney;
Childhood stares at you
Like glassy eyed pigeons outside of your office window
As you weep into your cold black coffee, Titan.
Your lacking adulthood is full of sloppy attempts to silence
Barking dogs in your slush brain,
Pushing down the bile that rises in your flaking throat,
As water floods your eyes like a basement during Katrina
And feeding worms writhe out of your flared nostrils,
Covered in snot and blackened discharge.
You are the Titan of Tears;
Your weeping rivals Mother Mary’s ****** streaks.

as the rain pelted my face i felt an odd sensation of satisfaction.

the water had cleansed my body like it was the holy water used at morning mass.

the catholics’ silence could be heard as i bathed in God’s tears.

the deafening echo of a wordless cathedral spinning into chaos.

as peace consumes me and
my body is laid to rest

i realize why God had flooded the earth the first time.