The church was abandoned. They hadn’t wanted to pay a venue or an institution, so they chose to have the ceremony in this place, a crumbling place. The entrance had no obstruction, no doors, and we walked right in. We sat in what remained of the wooden pews, three or four of them, most of us tightly squeezed in. The rest sat on the floor, on the ledges, on the altar. The windows were large and rounded at the top, windows shaped like healthy nail beds.

It wasn’t a traditional ceremony; while the official delivered a sermon, people danced in the aisle. Or people did what they felt. Someone slept. A woman in a green skirt paced around, another spoke loudly on the telephone. A man, a relative of someone important enough, laughed and kicked his legs. There was joy, it seemed, joy in everyone’s abandonment. Or relief in this abandoned place. We were gathered here against its intended purpose, and once a place is left or re-inhabited against its purpose the rules and regulations change. Another woman with long curved nails held a child; he snored softly against her bosom.

The people took the place over, made it something else.

It smelled of incense and sage and other dry leaves. There was a prayer, a speech. Next to me a woman’s foot in a black heel. Someone had tears coming down their chin, a chin with a tattoo of a cross upon it, and another person lay on the floor with their arms out, as if forsaken. Someone rode on the pegs of a bicycle, performing something circular. Someone else flew a kite.

An older couple held hands; they wore black as if in mourning. In the pew they touched each other, laid themselves over each other. The woman behind the man, with her black dress lifted up and her underwear exposed (also black). The man’s beard came down to his clavicle and his feet were exposed and dry. The woman’s piercings ran around the highest part of her nose. The man had no control over what she chose to do with him. His church shoes (also black) were sitting near him. She entered him. Her church hat (also black) moved behind her neck and she didn’t reach for it, she let the head covering go, her locs exposed to the apostle, Paul.

In the background an organ played something.

Instead of wafers, slices of blood orange were passed around. It was an unusual choice; I had never eaten fruit inside a place of worship. People had the red of the orange on their fingertips; they wiped the juice on their clothing: onto their silk chiffon, onto their lace, onto their cotton. Someone had a rosary wrapped around their wrist and they moved it up and down, the beads rolling.