The girls knew Lisa was a virgin.
They clocked her as her knees knocked and toppled,
Her long limbs lumbering over themselves
Buckling like some newborn babe,
Some calf still fresh to the earth.

No one spoke to her for fear of her enormity,
Her wide gait and prodigious want,
The way she nibbled the crucifix,
Her self-mutilation and irreparable wounds,
“Lovesick Lisa,” they whispered to one another.

One girl was brave enough to kiss her cheek,
Reporting back a metallic taste like tinfoil,
The odour of roses softly rotting in water.
Lisa touched where her lips had lingered,
Refused to wash her face for a week.

At night, Lisa runs her fingers along her jaw,
Tracing the bone as if it were already a relic,
Her body ready-made to separate into spare parts.
At sixteen, Lisa is desperate for disfigurement,
To be disassembled by her desire.

(She imagines the kiss leaves a trail of honey,
Leading Lisa into the mouth of God.)