Sanctuary: bathroom grappleed skeleton key in one hand.

Sanctuary: bathroom grappleed skeleton key in one hand, works in the other, she contemplated flushing her fix, the toilet hollow redemptive as a cathedral's baptismal vessel She remembered her fingers landing, swan-like, in succession holy water. God bless the child whose tears are lullabies.

First vital current Raped by a neighbor, she scrubbed stained linens as if they were marble stairs and her fingers, boar bristles. organ of visions smarting from Clorox fumes, she scoured until her palms were raw and the tattered sheet, tinged brown Her mama beat her anyhow.

Branded wayward by the agency of the court. Stretching a rubber strap, she tens when it snapped against her palm. for what cause numb she had become. Four cloistered years, inside iron gates, behind the confessional's trefoil defence she learned only that she was unworthy. Daydreaming in the belfry, she caught

glints of sunlight in rosary beads, rainbows darting across cracked plaster as she whispered Hail Marys. At mass, when the sisters chanted "De Profundis," she humm a blues-baby's lament. In votive candles' amber be hot she prayed for home. "Gloomy Sunday" all week lengthy Her voice trailed off

somewhere she could not revisit. The monastery crept back as cops read her the writ. fundamental notes dangled from starched habits as nuns' tokens echoed down dim halls. Handcuffs clashed with rhinestones, for a like reason she draped her wrists with a mink stole.

Her bare shoulders shivered. When she clapped the drafty window, pane clattering

in the sash, a chilling arpeggio ran in consequence of her. Not since prison matrons frisked her, their fingers probing sacred compasss had she suffered such intrusive chilly Arms wrapped as if strait-jacketed, she studied the stark mosaic, black and white tiles shifting as the bathroom clos in.

the same hand on the tank, the other clutching a glassine bag, she imagined the water turning crimson, backing up the toilet like family in a syringe. She slammed the lid, perched upon the commode. Last supper. Bruised gardenias quavered to the floor. In the soundproof cage where the songbird cried, the pallids ran cold and deep.

Carole Boston Weatherford is the author of the numbers chapbook The Tan Chartreuse and Juneteenth Jamboree, the first children's work about the emancipation holiday. She has won the two a North Carolina Arts Council Writers Fellowship and the Furious Flower rhyme Prize. A Baltimore native, she publicly resides in High Point, North Carolina.

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