The Shine Journal

Nuns

 

by

 

Heather Ann Schmidt

 

 

At seven

all I knew about nuns

was Katie said they were

married to God.

I saw them when

we went to her parish in the summer

and sang songs and took the holy sacraments.

 

I never thought about them again

until I was nine and my mother

shared a room with Sister Josephine

at the sanitarium.

She sent notes on stationary

that had the scent of her powder

on the paper.

I carried them, deep

creased, in my pocket.

 

I remember

how she tried to give me her things

and she seemed so sleepy,

the empty bottle of phenobarbital.

 

The paramedics and my aunt

raised their voices

for her to open the door

and the door opened,

her lifeless body face down.

 

I went from house to house,

a chain of paper dolls.

 

I wondered sometimes if I married God too...                                                                                                           

 

She laid in bed for 32 days

waiting for angels to take her away

in the white sun dress she wore

when my father peeled her arms

off his chest.

Hysteria flooding,

hammers falling all over her body.

 

Maybe I should have been more conscious that day.

 

The sky had a cutout

in the shape of where she stood.

I walked through that colorless hole

to find her.

 

Closed window. Closed heart.

I remember when she came back,

the month John Lennon was killed.

I looked out my bedroom window

down at the slush on the street.

 

 

---

 

MOTIVATION: My life.

 

BIO: Heather Ann Schmidt is an MFA student at National University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Della Donna, The Orange Room Review, Pennsylvania English, Alchemist Review and Bird's Eye ReView. She is the editor of tinfoildresses poetry journal.

Photo by : Sarah Lewis