The Marble Orchard
At the end of the day
when ghost shadows play
and darkness
bleeds,
she goes to a place called
The Marble Orchard.
Down stony paths she shuffles,
her heavy skirts rustling,
following
the scent of magnolia
through swaying beards of moss
until...
she enters the
mausoleum
where ivory angels greet her,
and marbled Christs
look down from their crosses
with frozen expressions
of agony;
monuments within monuments
sanitized, stainless, no dirt,
no
worms to eat the flesh,
no wooden stakes or silver bullets
to drive the spirits,
where the world is alabaster white
but for a few blood-red
rose petals
sprinkled on the floor like an offering
to the name-gods etched in walls,
and the only sounds she hears
are church bells chiming the Angelus,
the fading clang of a streetcar
passing,
and her crossless rosary,
the beads rattling nervously
between her fingers.
-Lydia Wick
