Hymn from a Stained Glass Girl, Sent Upward
Leah Gumpper

Come back for me
I will be inlaid at the
Tightest point of the steeple
Having lef my hard-luck shoes
In the brown mud
That marks the start of the bell ladder.
I will be thinned to the point where
The sun will skip off my skin
And you will see my peculiar glint
From a hundred miles, rose-white with the radiance
Of a dumb smile.

When you pass in your sky ship
After another full circumferencing sail
Drop a second rope fit with a loop
To catch my bare toes.
I can climb to no higher point alone.
I will be staring full at the sun with
Two telescope eyes, trying to pull down the place
Where you found your wings,
Playing mathematical games to pick the single
Solar flare that touched you
And sent you spinning into a blue orbit,
That with one soft blast removed you
From the tenement architecture of squares and churchyards.

I will be lit with the half-success
Of the devout,
Attempting to transmute all angles of this body
Into air,
Working toward an unsolid effortless flesh
That will let the light through
I have stretched my physical self,
Narrowed bone and extended tendon
As much as earth will allow.
I wait on the highest structure
Simply to float,
To trace with you a sky full of jet trails and
Slick ship furrows, to navigate paths
To the empty space beyond, to its pressureless waves.

Look for my spark of silence
Set on the horizon like a flame.
I breathe these words now into this fine bottle.
I let them go into the jet stream when the bell tolls noon.
I cross my thin fingers and watch them gliding through the highest light
And up to the darkness on a song.