The Orphanage at St. John the Baptist’s Retreat Center


Maybe once the leaves have dropped
from the trees, the voices are easier to hear,
those informal prayers of motherless children 
and childless women. 

One night in December, while you slept, 
the long-ago orphans roamed the halls, 
quietly turning doorknobs,
tiptoeing into small cubicles 
they once called home
though home was a moving target
and neither Santa Claus nor Jesus
could ever really find them
though the sisters of the convent
beseeched the gray skies, 
their asexual wails snaking
through naked branches 
while cold breaths, unsourced, 
pressed against the window panes
and inside, so many hearts
burned and burned and burned,
more dazzling than any votive candles,
a bonfire of solitudes,
each flame longing to merge
with the heartrending brightness of others.

-originally published in Life and Legends