NICOLE ROLLENDER

Ouija of the Heart

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     One night, stumbling drunk—
with no destination except anywhere-but-here
—I walked down the foggy road.
I discovered a doe hit by a car,

still alive. I knelt next to her
in the amber light. I touched her neck.
Leaned toward her black eye,

shared a last breath, the color
     of peonies. A type of planchette,

pointing away from my death.

     i

     Some of us, born
to leave the earth martyrs—
names destined for the hagiography.

You won’t know
if you’re marked until
it happens
but you must decide—
Viva Cristo Rey, or burn.

    I see the faces of the dead, in rings of mist. Maybe

they long again for a body: to hold a teacup, sit on the back porch,

    fix everything they regret. 

     I’ve heard you won’t receive
the grace to die until it’s time—
yet my daughter said, “I’m ready to be a soldier for Christ.”

     i

I thought I could confess the nights of blacking out & waking up. 
     Yet, despite receiving absolution, I can’t forget fragmented
flashes. Pushed down on my back by man trying to get my pants off

in the street. The candles spreading fire that almost engulfed my
    room. Taking a knife to my wrist & cutting a cross into it. 

     i

Wrapped bones in the crypt, girl saint,
we tell your story over & over, so
many apocryphal versions we don’t know
what you did to become winged.
Some of us would kill to unlock

salvation. As daylight fades, my God,
watch my bed, let dreams depart
     & phantoms fly, night’s offspring.

     i

What I want: to change my life. What I want: to die in love with God.

     i

With & without my daughter. Without, my ankles still submerged by honeysuckle she leafed over—
     with, her hands tangled in my fingers & tiger’s eye & lapis lazuli rings she won’t let go. With, her 
     hummingbird light bones crossed over my legs—without, the scent of rose hips & thorns remind 

     me of her precise fingers.

Without, the house lets go the light bound up in its beams—with, her hands mixing petals in a bowl
     of water. With, she prays to Michael the Archangel to submerge Satan in the sea again—without, if I
     could be anything in the world, the mother lets go all the pain (the subsuming) as if they don’t matter.

Without, I light red candles to Our Lady of Częstochowa to protect her—with, my hand on her hand,
     touching a miracle. With, if I could be anything, the mother who knows she dies, the pains of growing
     a girl will matter to enter heaven—

without, a gold-plated head reliquary, holding my severed neck, its quiver, its life.

     i

I imagine my children ripening in another woman’s hands. My son adds

and it was to every story’s end. My daughter claps when she wants to rewrite

a tale. They ask my husband if they’ll be sad like me. I name it demon.

Leveling. But a kind of grace to meet death & refuse it.

     i

I was never a teenage saint like you Maria, Maria Goretti—he penetrated
your thorax & the pericardium.
He stabbed your heart’s left auricle, your left
lung. The abdomen. 18 times. The small intestine
& the iliac. 18 stabs, Maria.

But what sainted you more than saving your virginity,
    forgiving your rapist before you died.

     i

Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, I entrust into your hands this everlasting knot that robs my peace.

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