On the corner stands a woman preaching the gospel of
desire.
Her sacraments: the laying on of hands, and legs, and lips,
and love for an hour
She opens her hand for an offering turned over for salvation
from the sin of wanting
in exchange
for the sin of lust.
And past her walks the kind of person who was once told that
looking twice at her would mark him as debauched
or worse a
man.
And so he walks past her glancing at a hand and a leg and
her lips
and
imagines what might be.
Leaves blow across the street on a current of a grey winter
wind in teardrop eddies of regret and loss
She feels the sting of converts
He feels the sting of a wife and child who do not know what
he needs and who cannot help him
They walk home.
He to a lonely house full of suburban saints
She to an apartment
in which
her scriptures are written in the cracked ceiling and stained sheets
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