“I am rebegot/ Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.” — John Donne, “A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day” Again and again, from nothingness I’m born.Each death I witness makes me more my own.I imagine each excess line of mine erased,each muscle

In certain folktales, she appears with Mary,pierced through with the scissors and needlesof girls who worked, forbidden, on Sundays.She is marred with knives, and scarredwith scythes wielded disobediently.I imagine Christ’s gentle hands, healinghis battered Saint, pulling nails from her flesh,