Repentance Again

repentance again old women kneel in pews dotted about the shadowed church black splotches they float among the incense clouds. faces waxen like the flicker candles raised, softened, in the stained glass light. hands tightly curled into each other black rosary beads clutched in woven need black, black, scary black repenting for the world of sin carried in their voluminous souls. timelessness pervades saturday confessions it is all the days and nights of transgressions large and small they roll down the passages of life to be laid at the feet of god well oiled with words of penance. ritual, mea culpa, contrition chanted. scrubbed clean as their kitchens, one by one they arise, genuflect and disappear into secularity.