The priest signs her until she’s biblically scented 

cinnamon, calamus, cassia, and myrrh,

smells I know only as church on a Sunday morning,

when I once sat in the left pews peering, 

my family took up space then, the five of us. 

 

I learned to let my mind wander in church stillness. 

Even now, my mother believes this is how we

gain eternal life, relief is her face as the priest crosses

my baby’s heart in the name of the Father, 

in his absence my father is here, as he was years before, 

 

fighting to stay awake after too many night shifts. I hear him,

pray, whisper, guffaw when a priest asks for more 

money, and then I’m a child again, my father holds me

as a toddler, whispering at midnight mass,

explaining we must get in line

 

to kiss the ceramic baby Jesus. I tell him

I don’t like kissing naked babies and maybe this is a story

I don’t actually remember but one I’ve been told 

so many times, it becomes a memory inside me,

opening between baptism blessings for my daughter, 

 

sitting on my husband’s lap at six months.  Her limbs wiggling, unafraid

of tall men in robes, and then I see myself walking down the center

aisle that splits me in two, my first communion,

my hands palm to palm in front of me, nervous I don’t forget 

to kneel and say Amen when I’m supposed to.

 

I’m wearing my sister’s outdated dress, white ruffles and lace,

the cross still sparkling from the neckline, and then I’m 16

and it’s my confirmation. I got to pick the dress, it’s purple, 

with embroidered black vines that look like they’re closing in

on the memory of me, because it’s the clothes that stick to mind,

 

my wedding day, my A-line dress, the organza skirt 

arranged like cupcake frosting, and then there’s my father

walking me down the aisle in his new black suit from Sears, 

the one he always said he’d be buried in and then he was,

I was too distracted by the marriage ritual of the day to notice him, 

 

the father I see in pictures who lingers in the center aisle after he lets me

go, looking as if he doesn’t know what comes next. I recite my lines, 

let church water fall. As I get older, I know this is how it goes, 

candle smoke is a current that flows and curves in a line until it’s gone, 

the priest prays over us, it’s my turn to believe.