Jeannine Pitas
when the archbishop placed his hands
on my sixteen-year-old head
when he anointed me with oil
sealed me with the Holy Spirit
I did not know
he was carving
a space in my head
that swelled into a house
with a roof but no walls
a door that couldn’t be shut.
throughout your life
he intoned
people will enter and leave
this house,
this chuppah,
this refuge.
some will stomp
through the rooms
with harsh boots.
others will decorate floors
with silk and satin and wool.
you must shelter them all
though none will stay.
since that day
I’ve not worn a ring.
I’ve not walked down an aisle
in a white dress.
I’ve neither donned a nun’s habit,
nor borne a child.
instead, I walk
with this space inside me
this open door
these messy rooms
populated by my great-uncle’s bayonet
from World War I
and the keffiyeh
my grandmother bought
outside Bethlehem in 1974
and the flashing silver flames
Natalie tore from her wrist and tossed to me
when I said
“I like your bracelet”
and the four high school yearbooks
holding photos
of Ashley Dickinson, aspiring biologist,
who once danced to the Beastie Boys
at school talent shows
today, gunned down at thirty-four.
and people come in—
the young superhero fanatic
in the grip of seizures
after the one he loved
married someone else
the meth addict who believes
the earth is flat
and won’t stop blathering on
about the Illuminati
the con artist
who fakes cancer
so that I will give him money
my mother
who calls at midnight
unable to wait in her own house alone
while my father plays blackjack
at the casino.
each day
as I carry these rooms
the only Beloved
never to leave me—
you, the stillness after every long weeping
you, the green flash of sunset
you, the mountain revealed at dusk—
you ask if I promise
to still be a home—
each day
I respond
I do.
Jeannine M. Pitas is a writer, teacher, and Spanish-English literary translator living in Iowa, where she teaches at the University of Dubuque. Her first full-length poetry collection, Things Seen and Unseen, was published by Mosaic Press in 2019. Her most recent translation, We Do Not Live In Vain by acclaimed Uruguayan poet Selva Casal, was published in 2020 by Veliz Books. Her poems, articles and translations have recently appeared in U.S. Catholic, National Catholic Reporter, The Christian Century, Religion Dispatches, Convivium, The Literary Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly and The Paris Review. She also contributes to the Catholic blog Vox Nova and is the Spanish translation editor at Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. Some of her favorite poets include Zbigniew Herbert, Wisława Szymborska, Denise Levertov, Pablo Neruda, and the various writers of the Book of Isaiah.
