76/

She finds her way back to my statue, tucked among the blooming gladioli and the burning, rubber scent of old exhaust. No matter where I send her, she’s found her way back since it was built and worshipped, in the era of miracles, fifteen-hundred-or-so lifetimes ago. Back when a person only had to see a miracle every half-century to believe; before technology’s ubiquity branded them coincidence.

She saw it colorful: brushed with calcium silicate and iron oxides and ground-up charcoal. She saw it crumbled, restored, moved, returned; all that endures is each visit’s tugging déjà vu. One day she’ll go — as she has before, as she will again — and I’ll bring her back, breathe her new. A miracle unwitnessed, in the hope she’ll visit me again.