"Because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy." ~ 1 Peter 1: 15-16 Every letter is folded into a disguise— ships' billows across the water, a rose thorn scribbling a postscript on your hand. In the yard, the secretary spiders are still working feverishly on their lines. What was it they were being punished for? In the school play, the child says the one line she has memorized: Fear not, for I bring you good news of great joy. We know what the angel must have said because someone wrote it down. And someone entered your name on the birth record, though not the more homely name spun by your parents out of air. Your mother's veins steeped in the scent of dry tobacco, spittle, and bitter gourds; your father's in the shape of a valley, church bells in a distant town. Your name bled from a rift in the clouds, where the ancestors dream of the last sweet they put in their mouths, the last book they read when they were alive. What are we if not made of writing?* What are we if not the conjurements we press upon time? (*thanks to Mattie Britt from my Craft of Poetry class for the line)
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