[rosary]

Always graceful, never much for grace. Sweeping across the floor like white-feathered wings on black marble, but with bitter use of eyes and tongue; she will burn you if you stare, but so hard not too. Grace, like floating- a commandment of attention and fear, rolled and hidden behind a startling respect.

But now, so white like the feathers that she moves with in stark contrast to everything she represents. Never one of God’s children, always the forsaken she does not have strength nor trust in anyone or anything enough to believe. She is an Angel, according to her father but has never been one of heaven, though probably of Hell. But to admit to Hell is to admit to Heaven, and she has never been one of God’s messengers.

Blessed or cursed, either way leading a life dictated by others than herself, she slips slowly. Blessed in that her time to fall is longer, cursed in that waiting for the ground is harder; it will be a sudden drop.

Sin plagues her.

She’s gone awry, seeking pride, love and forgiveness in all the wrong places. She’s murdered, lied and stolen; past, present and lives are collectibles for her. She mocks the church, the believers and what they believe in; she draws bloody crosses on lined paper with black ink.

She told herself she hated the boy next door and told the boy the same. She broke her promises and ignored her friends and later regretted it all; she yearned for her friends and promises back and willed her lies to truth and because it was never done turned her back on her mother’s faith.

She swept the floor with broken Angel’s wings, offering the cold world warm rain with her tears and thunder with the sound of her breaking heart. She fed the souls with blood from her wrists and fingertips and got her solace from a needle and offered it back through her thin, pale body as she stalked the street corners of nighttime in a city that supposedly made her a namesake.

Now she lies, still and sick, her hands as white as pillows and her hourglass figure reduced to bones and she sleeps.