Mad Maria

thinks she is a boy.
Obstinately she apes the man of the house,
the preacher at his pulpit, the schoolboy
with his sagging kneesocks.
“I am a eunuch,” she says.
“God castrated me in my mother’s womb.”

Every Sunday on my way to church
I pass by her sitting on a pile of luggage.
She’s always making plans to run away
but all she has in her suitcases
is a trove of circus masks,
so old their rainbow grimaces
have nearly rubbed off.
There she sits in her striped trousers,
twirling her false mustache.
The lace on the hem of my dress whispers,
Paint an inch thick, to this favor you must come.

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