A Girl's Own Gothic
       

They told me to wait for God
and so I waited for God in the vestry light,
for it was right to wait for God where there was shadow.
And there were shadows enough in the vestry,
shadows in which a corpse might appear, or an angel,
or even Him, if you tried hard enough.

Then, when the rector died, they made us
kiss him under the nave where he slept in a box.
Old and waxy and cold to touch.
It put me off the dead. God was dead,
a man on a cross crucified for us,
but living still, a flame in the tabernacle.

If you tried hard enough, you could see him there,
his sacred heart a persimmon torn asunder.
Out of love, they said.

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Copyright © 2019 Camille Norton All rights reserved
from A Folio for the Dark
Sixteen Rivers Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission