Rachel Mann

or the final couplet in the sonnet, I did not know a body could be killed multiple times.

I think this might be one such attempt is my desire to recognize that in my seeking after elegy, I might be doing a kind of violence to, in this particular case, the memory of Brianna Jai.

So I hope you can hear me struggling.

For me, the work of a parish priest, the work of a poet is the work of attention.

It's about attending deeply.

The theologian Janet Soskis, who I admire greatly, says, attention is rewarded with reality.

work that's how they bleed into one another in that costly way and when we attend to things to others to ourselves to what I want to say is the divine in our midst the reality is it's shot through with promise and to use that rightly disputed word

And Yomi's reminded just how disputed it is.

We see the grace.

We see the grace that's calling us to something more and something more than grace only offered to those who bear that deeply unattractive trace of privilege that people like me carry.

The reality that queers us into truth.