Margaret-Mary And The Heart Poem by Terri Witek

It helps to know her body wept:
Margaret-Mary Alocoque, first worshipper of the Sacred Heart,
was flooded with 'rheumatic affection' until she fell,
age nine, took to her bed for six more years,
then thought the pain in her chest might well be God,
stretching within her, awake at last.
There's nothing to do with a girl like this but let her go,
though once she was tucked into convent life
linens still spilled from her arms to the infirmary floor
and Sister Catherine hissed 'Fool! Fool!'
like her own acidic siblings.
What then did she make of her body's grief,
of God foundering within her until she couldn't stand,
the infirmary tipping like a ship's deck,
Sister Catherine fixed to its angry prow?
Everything else, the cots in clean rows, the thin, clear air,
all seemed dry as an unloved heart.
Only prayers were like the way she felt, the round old words,
her heart so full it skipped and swung,
a pink knot of flesh the parish Christ still points to
with one plaster finger,
measuring the length to which a sad girl goes
to trade her damage for his own.