Lecture Notes

That if I purged indulgence from my life 

I’d be pure		truth would enter me.

No novels. No sex. No brushing my long 

black hair till it shines. That each aggression 

within me at once slide and dissolve. Severe 

in its grace, silence, my forgiveness. & silence,

what waited after being a woman,

being a monk, being human. 

What I wouldn’t understand until coiled 

inside it. & even then, I couldn’t tell you

what it meant if I felt so moved,

so just. If I remembered how to speak.