Relic

though winter hazels my eyes, the way bones

belong to just one person, the way I will never be anything but ten

when my brother drives off for good. Before it was a beetle,

the shard of glass might once have been a Heineken

& either way I am glad to miss it with my step.

I walk circles around the point & miss it every time—

when I am fourteen, I miss it in Wednesday night catechism,

meditating on the schoolroom carpet. Sister Joseph

praises the blue light, the spirit I see behind my eyelids

& suddenly I am holy, a martyr, a saint, my bones

split & exalted as relics in as many altars as one body

can supply. The girl of me would have died for anything

she felt chosen by, so it was that moment, there, she perished—

and now? Always the dark, always my brother driving away.