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 Penance: Reading to a Shut-In For a while I was enamored of such a life, of sealed doors and the shades drawn. I arrived in the afternoons, mittened and scarved, bringing in winter and a book. She’d sat there for years in her shawl on account of frailty and a bruised womb. She was delicate,a chipped dish shelved, waiting and waiting to be used. Her thin-paged Bible balanced like a platter in my lap as I traced each chapter, each martyr with an inky thumb. And in this way we passed the drowsy, gray hours. But I wanted to comb her white web of hair and tell her the stories I had learned of spies and witches and children lost in woods. When camphor and furnace soured, I left her house with my pockets full of fists. I crossed the school yard, hunched in my coat, scraping worn hopscotch chalk with my boots. That street was littered with sticks and leaves, and the wind numbed my legs, chafed my face. Those days I was a child shriven, a loosed girl,running home. ...

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