Our Lady of Sorrows

I take my face to the mirror
and see how well-rested
my regret has become.
How like a girl it is,
ready to play her game
of hide and seek
where nothing is lost
or dead, especially the dead. 

My mother has been discovered.
She has a story, an apron of scars.
Our Lady of Sorrows behind the confessional.
Sympathy for the Devil, she said,
is artful artlessness.
That was her kind of compliment;
a nod to failure,
merciless, unlovable, correct. 

If luck opened a window,
night would fall out
of its wheelchair
and pray to the lord —
stored beautiful and extinct
in his tiny gold refrigerator.
In the end, she forgot.
Her sins 

were of the finest weaving.
How they whispered
chandeliers into the innocent darkness
where I hated her wickedly,
hiding my riot and hurt.
My mother loved me,
but it did no good.
God was still out there. 

ξ

Amy Thatcher lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she works as a public librarian. This is her first publication.