Phases of Venus

through me, you first fell into the flat heat of florence summer. I held

you in the mornings and late afternoons. Your father studied physics and the theories

of vibrating strings. Behind his booming sonatas, I became like the hills, that silent surrounding.

I was seventeen in the lemon grove with

you, I remember warm

grass and looking up at the web

of branches above you, the movement

of celestial bodies

all dim light on my back

When I was six we walked and walked and walked in the evenings and you told me about Kepler and Copernicus

and the details of planetary rotations. You drew diagrams of a heliocentric universe in the dirt. You said that

I was born of sinful fornication so no one would marry me. So I take the veil. Rename myself Sister Maria Celeste.