That summer when it rained, we read Corinthians because we loved the words,
I Corinthians, II Corinthians, our tongues slow with luxury we would later give 
lovers, but then we were only eleven, our thin bodies hungry for the radiant

mystery of the holy, which we thought would come through language and water, 
so some days we ran outside and let the rain rinse our hair until we began to shiver 
and had to run back in through the kitchen, bare feet splattering the linoleum, 

skin tinged blue as if our veins had swum nearer the surface in our ecstasy.
By pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost,
by love unfeigned, we read, and stood shuddering while the air dried us, towels

too much an indulgence of the flesh. Much of the language was strange as the Latin
the priest rushed through at Mass: predestinate, fornicators, but we believed 
if we spoke in the hush of the spirit, the radiant mystery would be ours to reveal:

In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. Sometimes 
we wept, the words were so beautiful, though by then we had looked up fornicators 
and knew they were not beautiful, and we prayed for R’s mother, whose beauty

had led her to fornicate once a week with Mr. W, who smoked cigars and sold 
overpriced insurance. We pretended we were going to my house but hid 
in the tree hut and watched them. He would grind his cigar out, then reach

for her mother’s breasts. Long kisses, in the porch shadows, before they disappeared 
inside. One afternoon he tore her blouse open and we gasped that she wore no bra, 
that she laughed. R held my hand so hard I could feel all my bones. 

A month later, after things she would not even whisper to me, R’s father left 
for good. Her mother decided to move back to the city, where they belonged, where
Mr. W was from. R asked me to pray for her forever, and we swore 

to this, and wept. But we did not read together, not that day or the next, though 
hard rain kept us indoors. We sat on her bed and whispered terrible things 
about her mother, bitch, whore, glaring with the fury of the righteous. 

I remember that most plainly, how unyielding we were as we sat there, 
how hard we were pretending against our yearning for someone to do
to us what Mr. W had done to her mother, to cause such radiance.