Gerry LaFemina

Dear Christine, I believe a priest might sentence me to 7×70 Hail Marys for so many decades of sinning, so, often, I take whatever absolution I can find. Your name contains Christ, after all, and how well you’ve known my impure thoughts. Besides the last time was in a church I just stared at the stained-glass windows—each another fantastic fable of some saint in mid-scene. In the sun, how like a prose poem those self-contained rectangles of prismatic light. I’ve been penitent and petulant at different times, and salvation still no closer. All over, churches are being sold off. In Pittsburgh they converted one into a brew pub where we once met, and in New York years before, I moved in a nightclub where a DJ spun records from the altar. Dancefloor bodies writhing, ecstatic, fallen angels back when any flesh was holy to me—the heat of them, their sweat and saliva anointing. Thus, I accepted the possibility of a god, at least briefly. What prayers were lost in the volume of it all? I could forgive myself 490 times but what good would it do. Tonight, I’ll dip focaccia in chianti, savor it all for I love the body and the blood, then later, pray the way the sisters taught me, for all the ones I love in alphabetical order. I should get to your name before I fall asleep.