Tuesday, October the Seventh, 2003

“Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death…Amen.” 

How he melted into my embrace, how he fell into his hymns and devotions and how they will forever be imprinted upon my memory. Again and again I’ve heard these words; again and again I have had to swallow them with the blood. Beautiful… they’d whisper. I grow weary of it.

 Damn you David. I have an unrequited scorn and immeasurable love for you and this curse you’ve given me… to write.  How childish it seems to keep a diary now, to write in the pages as I had as a girl, as a mortal. So we replace the word Diary with a finer more adult word, Journal. And the beauty of this Journal, I may digress whenever I so choose.

However, there was a point in my writing.

The Virgin. Why do these mortals associate me with such a form of divinity? The white of my flesh becomes a symbol of purity rather than monstrosity, my jeweled eyes the glimmer of heaven rather than the touch of the preternatural…something they all too often associate with evil, with Hell, and with their Devil. I have a pray for them.

“Hail Pandora, full of Pain. Tormented art thou among women. And cold is the darkness of your womb, lifeless.  Pandora, mother to none, devour us Sinners. Bring us to the hour of our death. Amen.”

Oh but then I came to a sudden realization. Behind the image of the Virgin Mary and her infant child Jesus, behind the image of the crucifix and the suffering Christ, there is love.  “And it rained and rained for millions of years, and the volcanoes boiled and the oceans cooled, and then there was love?” The words of David and how we had both been amused… though could it not be possible?   Despite all, I have come to acknowledge that no darkness has ever been deep enough to extinguish my personal knowledge of love.  I hold a love for mortals, for spiritual things, for statues of marble goddesses, for Marius.