Explaining to her that
I was only a double
and could appear anywhere,
she suggested I sleep
a few nights in her temple;
airless, disused, peopled
with gravitationalists handfasting.
She wore a smock
tattooed with hookahs
and a God's illegible
face. Placing a stained
glass card in my palm,
I wept St. Bernard out,
I wept thorns out and sewed
each into a heart. With hideous
cries of pity, she put me
in the city river,
peeling coins over my eyes.