Great Expectations

A holy hymn for the sisters,
whom now degrade into the dry land,
where the insects feed and ferment their cuts
but there wasn't Eucharist to abstain.

Though they carried smiles of ambivalence, and dreams of eternity,
lips that devastate, eyes that contemplate --
great expectations intervened like their Sunday school penance
and they were left with their Hail Mary's to fill their empty stomachs.

The Virgin's chalice they tried to fill with promises,
atoning for the perfect, marveling grace.
They would become the Madonna creatures,
that they were expected to become.

The cut-out abstract bodies that they were expected
to trim along the lines of were dotted together,
aligned made an alpine of expectations
too acute for their decaying limbs to climb.

Smiling sisters and the corresponding toothless bluffs,
held their cheeks until their desert muscles gave out.
No pattycake, no parades, no sunshine for the daises
wilted and bleached without the communion of the sun.

Their sins were tallied on a chalkboard wall,
the white dust hiding in their small hands.
This hoax they gift wrapped with frail knuckles genuflecting,
tied and sealed with fingers crossed.

Tragic, frail prayers counted down in their heads,
like the vile down their throats.
Comforted in the loss of self, wrapped in an overcoat,
that they were no longer immaculate.

And the onlookers' eyes were watered with ambivalence.
A pretty face is such a waste on a frame that's fading away.
Mirror, mirror, watch the image crumble in.
Forgive them father, for we have all sinned.

Expectations whispered on their Virgin ears,
the ones our sisters knew in the routines they executed.
We prayed that they could save themselves but,
how could we have expected them to?