Lily Beaumont
communion
I’d like to be the woman cast up inside a midnight
church, now bowing low above her vaulted hands,
palely shadowing the ceiling’s arc. You see her only
from behind—the coat still buttoned, the hair eloquent
and loose in the way of girls and widows, the shoulders
perched atop the pew’s back like courting sparrows. Her grief
or fear or penitence moving on her face: hidden and so
legible.
Lily Beaumont is a freelance curriculum and study guide developer; she holds an MA in English and Gender Studies from Brandeis University, and currently lives in Central Texas. Her creative work has appeared in publications including Open Minds Quarterly, The Furious Gazelle, and Nine Muses Poetry.
communion
I’d like to be the woman cast up inside a midnight
church, now bowing low above her vaulted hands,
palely shadowing the ceiling’s arc. You see her only
from behind—the coat still buttoned, the hair eloquent
and loose in the way of girls and widows, the shoulders
perched atop the pew’s back like courting sparrows. Her grief
or fear or penitence moving on her face: hidden and so
legible.
Lily Beaumont is a freelance curriculum and study guide developer; she holds an MA in English and Gender Studies from Brandeis University, and currently lives in Central Texas. Her creative work has appeared in publications including Open Minds Quarterly, The Furious Gazelle, and Nine Muses Poetry.