Margery sewed a hairshirt into her dress to pitch herself to the edge of exasperation. She kept nothing else secret, talking to relive her intensity: Je pushed out, then sus, inward and under her tongue. She repeated bliss and ecstasy, words that looked beautiful in books by St. Bridget and St. Catherine. She’d had no peace of mind to begin with and she was not able to imagine a break from the world she knew.

•

At that time there were three popes. The financial control of the world and eternity was up for grabs, so people were burnt to discourage personal reckonings of experience. People of humble birth were vulnerable. Margery was not eager to die; she did not want liberation but a cosmic shortcut, the satisfaction of a greed for more life.

•

Margery spent two years in a state of arousal and despair. Jesus was a wish. She waited actively as though feeling the air quicken before rain, imminent saturation. His translucent skin—a milky wash over a base coat of gold dust. She conjured long conversations tremulous with sincerity and avowal—or he was describing her to Mary or God. She sat up and looked around, surprised he didn’t appear in the creak of an opening door. She debated with bent treetops and the motionless bright horizon where clouds streamed into the sky. Her feet rubbed together, her tongue and mouth tingled, her membranes clanged with emptiness.

Margery was caught in the prison of six or seven positions, repeated hopelessly through the night. She expected compensation for the pain of his absence. Her excitement was sickening against the gray dawn and the house sparrows’ insipid chirps.

She watched the world take shape. On her neighbor’s roof a young man carried slate tiles up to his boss, his father possibly. Every time the young man laid down the stones, he hitched up his hose on his hipless torso and looked in her window.

They were separated by a few yards. He was shirtless; it was late July but it would not be hot for a few hours. His chest was smooth and white though he worked in the sun. He had long muscles in his arms and back, and black curls above a long haggard face. Swallows whose nests he had disturbed darted around him, shrilling tsink, tsink, tsink. She brought back a pear to bed and cut slices; the pear was crisp, with more fragrance than flavor. Margery liked her rosy curves and caverns and strength: she outdistanced John going uphill. The roofer whistled to get her attention.

Later she found him in front of her house wearing his doublet and apron. She imagined blunt acts. Above these fantasies, Jesus’s face pitched in amazed spasms. She asked, “Do you know Jesus?”