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Apologia Pro Vita Mea In Memory of Sister Richard you keep dying— another brittle limb near the center of the cloister garden falls in slow time from the weary eucalyptus. I can’t be there now stammering off key while you sing the Salve Regina perfectly in four parts, a coffin again borne with grace down the front stairs of the motherhouse. I try not to think of it as failure, the way so many of us vowed, then left, the way I promised you I would be an earthen vessel holding and handing down your passion for books. In springtime in the chapel, pink-orange quince blossoms –  – on the altar, you make ready another burial, and learning of it weeks later, I find her copies of virgil and Horace yellowed without thought on my shelf. and knowing I did with my life the only thing I could do, I ask some sort of absolution from her in broken Latin. –  – ...

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