The days are coming when the veil will fall
only to reveal a world still mediated by a screen
and you will strain under the length of a sky
that has not changed for you in a day, a month,
a year of days stacked upon days. Look up now
and know there are moons we cannot see.
Through closed doors the demons who were cast out
will return to settle in your empty rooms,
heaving upon you a darkness dark as sackcloth,
their lies the soft cushion of remorseless regret.
Just remember you were once sprinkled
with hyssop and made clean as the first galaxy.
Loneliness will become the only habit
you cannot break and you will be unsure
if this is a miracle or a malady, and yet,
sturgeon will swim once again in rivers and lakes
and there will be time to separate
the chaff from the wheat.
Today, just bend your body toward belief.
Originally published in Lydwine Journal
Mary R. Finnegan is a writer and nurse living in Philadelphia. Her essays and poems have appeared in Dead Housekeeping, PILGRIM: A Journal of Catholic Experience, Catholic Digest, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Speak Easy–WHYY, The American Journal of Nursing, Lydwine, and elsewhere.