Miracle mongers. Bedwetters. Hair-shirted wonder
workers. Shirkers of the soggy soggy earth. A bit touched,
or wholly untouched living among us? They shrug their
bodies off and waft with clouds of celestial perfume. No
smooching for this crew, except for hems, and pictures of
their mothers…their lips trespass only the very edges of
succor. Swarms of pious bees precede her. One young girl
wakes up with a ring on her finger and a hole in her throat.
Another bled milk when her white thigh was punctured.
All over the world, a few humans are born each decade
with a great talent for suffering. They have gifts that enable
them to sleep through their mistreatment: the sleep of the
uncomplaining just, the sleep of the incomplete. Our
relationship to them is the same as our relationship to
trees: what they exhale, we breathe.
Amy Gerstler
