Sacred heart: a love story

Mary Magdalene
wasn’t a prostitute. But it helped explain her

hundreds of years after she lived.
Named scarlet, hidden under desert sands

Gospel secrets
that she’d been loved best by Christ—

that she’d calmed apostles,
and best knew his heart.

How drops
of his blood

cooled in the folds
of her hand.

But what is it inside the heart
of a man, a god? or a law?

In medical books that explain the heart,
pages show how blockages persist.

Women kept from vestments
because Christ only chose men.

Entire lifetimes haltered by the tartar
of human veins.

And without emphasis, passion or gore,
passages tell of the unseen:

how a pale gold liquid,
camouflaged by all the red,

soothes spent cells,
nourishing the darkest vessels

Mary’s mouth-kisses buried
in the deserts:

her secret sediments
in perpetual resurrection.