The Abbey

Poetry
Written By Rebecca Watkins

I once put God’s son in my mouth.

Standing in line, head bowed,

I opened my lips, my holiest swallow.

Near where I live, there is an abbey on a cliff

overlooking the Hudson River, where nuns

used to make communion wafers to ship

all over the nation.

I wonder, did the women who lived there ever go

to the edge and stare at the moon’s bright, scarred face?

Did they shiver at her bravery of being seen?

Unlike the way they hid their own skin

in shadows and under long black habits.

If God were a man, wouldn’t he want to see

what they hid? If he were a curious man,

wouldn’t he ask why they hid from him,

but not the moon and not each other?

So close, they could feel one another breathing,

at the edge of the cliff, kicking rocks down

watching the dark water, ripple and rise.

Rebecca Watkins

Rebecca Watkins holds an MFA in poetry and an MSed from the City University of New York. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Writers Resist, The Palisades Review, The Amethyst Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Hole in the Head Review, and The Roanoke Review among other literary journals. Her creative nonfiction has been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards. She is the author of Field Guide to Forgiveness (Finishing Line Press 2023) and Sometimes, in These Places (Unsolicited Press 2017). She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and two dogs. More of her work can be found at rebeccawatkinswriter.com and @rwatkinswriter. 

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Self-Portrait, after Artemisia Gentileschi