Alan
Catlin
Our
Lady of the
55
Nearly
every morning,
a certain woman
in our
community
comes running
out of her
home
with
her face white
and her house
coat flapping
wildly.
She cites out,
"Emergency,
emergency."
and
one of us runs
to her and
holds her until
her
fears are calmed.
We know she
is making
it
up; nothing
has really
happened to
her.
But
we undersand---"Lydia
Davis, Fear"
She
is the caretaker
of the barely
sentient,
prone
to incoherence
babbling skeletal
woman
of
indeterminate
old age, guiding
the wheelchair
into
a secure place
on the overcrowded,
already
running
late bus. From
the folds of
the old one's
shawl
she extracts
pamphlets,
scripture,
citings
chapter
and verse in
a determined
monotone
to
the assembled,
trapped by
circumstances
and
assurances
that Jesus
is the one
true love
on
the crowded
highway of
life, on this
journey
where
the reward
is on the other
side, a point
she
emphasizes
by tearing
carefully folded
strips
of
tract as she
speaks, no
necromancer's
tricks
up
her short sleeves,
just a magician's
basic
origami
folding, transformation
of the torn
into
a unified whole,
a cross. "Like
the one
Our
Lord died on
for our sins.
"We, the
unawed,
the
not converted,
travel onward,
condemned
to
remain as we
are, sinners
in the hands
of
the Capital
District Transit
Authority,
riding
an uneven highway
to hell.
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