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I knelt naked in the grotto west of the meditation pool—
the closest in years I’d gotten to belief. Around her feet:

cockle shells, one gold earring, a crochet-covered rock,

Though my answer wobbled on the edge of insincerity, I knew it was the right one. I have always known how to give the right answer. The cost of giving the wrong one was too great.
I knew it was the right answer because Brother Mark savored it. His face relaxed into admiration, as if I were a young dog who had just accomplished a complex trick.

Fear not, a voice said.
And out of the voice emerged a figure.
He looked like a man
but we knew he wasn’t.

As a curator, I have a nearly mystical sense of the power of objects to open a portal between history and today, lives long ended and lives currently unfolding.

It’s interesting to me how quick we are to trust a museum’s account of history simply because it’s presented in a way that feels organized and professional. We gloss over whatever seems unappealing or doesn’t fit into the story we are trying to tell. In many ways, I think fiction can tell a more honest story than what we consider to be the truth.

It isn’t sight or sound or taste I’ve missed
the most—I’d been deprived of each before—
but routine, trusty touch, which we ignore
promiscuously:

The signs of where Esme had gone wrong, she thought, must have been there from the beginning—probably in primary colors. She wondered if burning the toast was where she’d gone wrong. Each mistake led to another, she thought, wishing she could be perfect.

First rain in the new house—
walls passed inspection, but
who knows? It’s hard to trust
in bricks. Aren’t they just cut-up

mud, lashed now by spray
from clotted gutters?

Twenty years ago, we brought the first child home. We held him, and the silence before us then was the deep, vast thrum of all we didn’t know. We were here, suddenly parents. The silence weighed down the air like boulders on silk. And then, of course, he cried.

When I go to the movies—well, when I go anywhere—Saint Augustine is always nearby. He lives in my head (and heart) rent free.