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24 tHe MIssIon store The virgins with doors in their bodies fold out like small cupboards on the glass display case. Inside all of them, there’s a god, a man, with or without a beard, its hard to tell, their nestling in gold robes with blotchy collars. It would seem by her smile she is contented; her true content made visible for her.A young girl beside me is deciding between the darker and the lighter woods. “They are all dreamy,” she says. “Their doors can close, and open again. Little cuckoo clocks without the time or the telling.” I’m thinking of–– Ophry’s flowers shaped like bees attracted to their own shape, and of a hymn playing for a Golden Cuckoo: let him be plucked out,leaving us the emptiness where a longing can grow for what is. I’d love to tell the girl that it would be safe to leave the door open, to let the god appear and disappear by himself. I know though, just by the way she’s pulling her money from out of a rubber squeeze purse, she would tell me—the fun is in her opening and closing the doors; she will see when she will and what she can count on. She will be ten tomorrow. ...

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