A Tooth of Mary Magdalene,

suspended in rock crystal. So much we didn’t see, the last time. Some say she crossed the ocean to France in 33 AD and mourned him. Even there, he found and called to her, disguised as a winged creature. Cupid’s bowl of spilled pleasure — we didn’t see it, or this dove, this gilded eucharistic dove with a hinged door in its back, a vacancy we didn’t see. We didn’t see this silver arm, reliquary for a part of Saint Valentine, or this erotic mithuna sculpted in thirteenth-century India, an aroused couple about to be one body. Here’s a pink-and-white dress for a baby girl from 1956. The last time the soldier’s mistress wore this byzantine gold chain, wet with blue gems, was in the year 1000. We didn’t see it, or the housekeeper who became Rembrandt’s common-law bride. She never had such opulent jewels. In 1650 he painted her, a hearty archetype of wife, holding her robe closed. Can I ever be so placid, so sturdy in relationship? In the museum I think, Yes. But back out in the city I’m this purple orchid opening easily in the florist’s hand, humid with tears when the man in the bodega speaks to me sweetly, calls me honey. The last time I lived in tenderness was 2019, with you whose body was shelter and scent, who sang, knelt, took your time, and fed. Is the whole world just one crumb in the belly of that dove? I turn because he calls to me, this pigeon flecked as the firmament in storm. In 2022, he leads me to a statue of a naked girl outside an apartment, an angelic adolescent chained like Andromeda to the iron gate. Her last time was long ago. Such a sense of being behind glass when I look into her eyes. There was so much we didn’t see, but it saw us. We shone for it. The past recognizes its imminent relatives.

It warms as it watches
you and me becoming
artifacts of love.