| Horarium of the Nuns
5:30 Rise Creak the bones unfold to dark as feet slide into cotton slippers, movement of bodies hum like moths eating white wool. 6:00 The Angelus (Lauds) Blessed art thou Lady of Shadows long suffering, perfect pain, your womb an echo canyon of the lost. 6:20 Prayer (An Hour) Forgive the lust that eats the soul like rust on a tin watering can. Longs to touch the callus on the hand of the Mexican who cuts branches off rose bushes and keeps the red petals. 7:20 Great Silence Ends Words form on lips like speckled stones dropping into lakes of sound. 8:00 Conventual Mass The Virgen Santisima de Guadalupe in painted squares, a mosaic: stars on her, mirrored by the sea, she is sky, creeping golden vines on her burnt siena dress, she is earth. 8:45 Eucharist (Thanksgiving) For the hummingbird who stares questions and twists her neck to show a ruby hiding there. 9:00 Breakfast The egg, essence of life like the purple coneflowers crushed in one’s palm, the seeds broadcast on salty wind. 9:30 Manual Work Nails blackened half moons, weeds the roses donated and named: Peace, Sheer Bliss, Rhapsody, At the bottom of the hill a beach: divers suit up like black seals, artists with easels upon sand paint the yellow monastery. Noon (Sext) Hymns in honor of our Lady the ever-virginal mother. 3:00 Prayers for the Dying Tears form an apricot pit in the throat. 5:00 Prayer A prayer for the brother who drinks from 2:00 to 8:00 pm and on the seventh day rests. Brown eyes once clear now tarnished by thunder that haunts his sleep. 6:00 Evening Prayer For the mother whose bitterness is uncooked chocolate like the wafer one cannot swallow. 7:30 Recreation Braids hair like a rosary, copper snakes around sandpaper fingers. 8:30 (Matins) Night prayer Knees creak on an pew of stars. Shoots arrows at the moon, climbs to the place where she thinks her sigh escapes God’s notice. 9:10 Great Silence Begins Maria Garcia Tabor |