Penance’s breasts are falling off 

She asks her body why it is falling apart

We’re fed, she says

We’re fed with the grass of our ancestors 

The body should be growing 

But it’s dying

Her nervous system still routed in hell

Having been born with sin

So she eats the bread

To save her body 

And to save her spirit

But not her head

Her head is like stone

Stone like the road

The road that leads to nowhere

The road that builds the worth

The worth that doesn’t fill even half of her growling stomach

She’s thankful for her stone head

She would rather her head be made of stone than to burn like her feet

But her body still burns

And she will have a child, lost

And the child will burn

With a stone head

And bread in its belly

But the bread will never be fully digested 

A holy spirit won’t come through the body

whose intestines are clogged with grass

But through all this 

the hand of Penance is pure

She wants to make right 

She holds her breasts

She knows there’s something else

Because if there wasn’t 

Her aches wouldn’t run so deep

Her head is stone

Ancient stone, heavy and sustaining 

equal devices of protection and death 

like the road, it claims to save her

progress, a direction 

a direction that cheats growth 

for the depraved fruits of deterioration 

drip-fed to versions of her who came before 

It lives now, 

Invisible

Not seen but felt

A lost identity, repackaged in moral control, costing not only womanhood, but offspring 

So her nervous system climbs the mountain of Penance 

To redeem the savagery of her ancestors

To overturn the face of shame 

onto the face of purity 

a purity so jarring and monstrous 

it forgives any action designed for its own feeding 

But it’s not real

If it were real this picture would be much different 

and despite all this her hand is pure

rich with another purity

not of the Holy Spirit

but the human spirit

with her essence 

not that of The Lords