Train to Agra

A Miracle in Blue Jeans/You Who Have Taken the Name Clare

 A Miracle in Blue Jeans . Somewhere far from me in towns called Normal and Bethlehem, a girl in a coma is granting people miracles. All day long visitors throng her bedroom like rosary beads on wrists, lining it with their bodies, wheelchairs, and holy water. Her hair has grown over the edge of the bed, sweeping the floor. Some have cut a piece and tucked it in their pockets.They have come so the girl’s mother can lift her hand and lay it somewhere—head for tumors, wrists for arthritis, spine for something growing like a bird’s nest that weaves itself larger every day.They have waited for a year with their wounds of faith, kneeling in the driveway, the gravel biting into soft knees.They wait for something to cry the smell of roses, for a miracle in blue jeans, for the day when the girl is laid out like the last supper on a football field. . Today, the computer programmer from Seattle will play the part of Jesus. It took him two months to grow out his beard, hair cascading just past his shoulders as he becomes the image he has memorized from his second grade religion textbook—the one where the plague of locusts covers the sky like a dark cloak.The cross must be weighed exactly, the dimensions in their recognized perfection. How heavy? he thinks. It does not matter, not really, as he must carry it—five pounds, twenty pounds, fifty pounds. He must bear it. He was chosen.The air is dry with heat and death.  His wife will play Mary Magdalene, and she is disappointed not to be the blue virgin. But at least she gets to wipe his face, memorize eyes and nose with sweat and cloth. She will stand out in the crowd. All the night before, she has prepared, the moment when he will stop and she will step out, cloth extended. Everything matters. She wishes she could wash his feet, but that is another story, one before hers. He wishes it into being—the first stumble, the smell of eucalyptus in the air. Everyone has memorized their role—this one must call out, that one spit at his feet.  You Who Have Taken the Name Clare At night, I can see the lights of the cloister dimmed by trees, smell the dust and holy water burning your wrists.Your gray cloak of silence eclipsed by ten feet of stone and mortar, the wall of holiness, wall of God—I think of that year you left us, our English class mute with your decision, your longing for silence, for rough work. For days after, your voice dissolved under your tongue, brown bread sticking to your teeth. How your fingertips dulled to a shine by hours of spinning thread, hours of sowing open mouths closed.You left us to Austen and Shakespeare, to reciting sonnets out loud, while you learned to love the absence of sound, absence of an aching voice rubbed raw, your world just a whisper, a holy name uttered before sleep and dreams of burning, dreams of St. Clare, your namesake, on the mountainside, of her sipping from St. Francis’s nipple, dropping her bowl of hot water, of food. In the mornings, your skin is wet with unspoken things.You are her daughter.You are chosen, hair falling under shears like words stolen from your mouth.They are stolen, delicious, pushing through the grated windows, between bits of stone and glass, mica glistening under the moon. For days after you left, I chanted, loving the sound of my voice, seduced with its timbre and substance—cloister, cloister— until my tongue memorized the shape, soft mud and hard stone, a word leaning into itself. As if by saying it, made it real—the stone wall, the towers and oaken pews of your life. And what of us left behind, wondering if your lips forgot their movement, if your tongue lost its shape.Wondering if you whisper your name to make it your own. ...