My anglo boyfriend kept you ensconced in plastic on the dashboard of his baby blue S.U.V one day we had 64 oz of Guatemalan starbucks coffee in paper cups and the excess dripped fire over your manufactured white head so that when beads of caffeine energy raced down your back--I swear I saw you move. I saw you on his journa--you were laminated then on reprinted paper photographs that showed your beauty through age He said you meant everything to him as he was to be an Episcopalian priest, needing you everywhere--his car, his bedside table his many notebooks so that when he prayed, it was first red before blue. But I wasn't religious then and my padre had strayed away from the church. So I found your representation in the would-be priest so be strange, another white man trying to teach me about my culture his way, suddenly involving him. And while we nestled and wrestled in his wrinkly white sheets My uncertainty was juxtaposed with your faith Resting amongst sunbeams and petal bursts on your windowsill alter I don't remember what it was made of, All of these notebooks and relics that we found in store windows and truck stops, you were so commercial and I resisted because it was as if The white boy had taught me about you, like when he made me speak Spanish while we were kissing. Forgive me my virgin but I have sinned because I be so confused from that need, And I drip emotions clumsy like wax at my feet. I cannot move from place to another, mi virgin. porque Mi virgin I am no longer one of purity though I have looked for the best. To me you are not such a symbol but a true woman Who aids more in resilience and as evoked spirit it is you we need and look to I want you off of the s.u.v and into My meager alter; I am sad that he found you before I did.