The Zones of Paradise

AND THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST

ANDTHE FIRST SHALL BE LAST Avon Ladies, gaze on this and weep: a handsome zealot’s on my doorstep, tempting me with the make-over to die for. No lush scourge of loofah and mint mud, no lily-of-the-valley bath salts or baubles of scented oil can cleanse and heal like the ointment of belief. That dirty, little business of the grave is bygones in the pastel paradise he riffles through, and everybody’s twenty-something, trim, and smiling. And then my buff believer lifts those dark brown eyes and judges me.Yes, I have a few faux pas of gray, and a recent, forty-something aptitude for chins, but still I’m startled when he condescends, Ma’am, take heart, our Lord makes all things new. I want to reassure him I look different in another light— but maybe even that’s no longer true. I tell my heart to harden, before I backslide through the closing door. Not a hair of your head shall perish, promised Luke. And inTorcello, at the gold flash of Gabriel’s horn, I saw lions retort with torsos they once relished, hands and feet blurt from mouths of wolves, heads peer from the maws of blissed-out jackals— the soul salvaging the body from every junkyard grave and gut.  But I’ve misplaced my little lot of beauty, not my body. And so I’d need to lighten as I rise, casting off the weight of birthday cakes and barbeque, of chevre and champagne, my face recanting years of smiles that softened it, my breasts forgetting heavy miracles of milk until each nipple lifts, pert and pagan. But could my belly have my babies and deny them, too? And who would recognize me sleek and sweet and feral, everything I’ve learned of love, downsized to fit on the head of a pin? Only you, long-lost Adam—. I can almost see the rendezvous: in a throng of holy shoo-ins, the two of us just barely saved, in our smell of clove and sweat, our tender, savage appetite. Let God think twice before He gives us back those bodies! Unless there is a private moon for us in heaven, a little lake, the bed of a beach, and the endless ransom of each flawless night— nights when I was naked, and unashamed, and I visited you.  ...