Stigmata

I did not save myself for someone to whom I would matter.  For whom my innocence, on technicality, would be valued.  I sought this out on purpose, true, but there is a tiny piece that wonders:

What if I had told the Sisters that I saw blood on the crucifix?  What if I could have crossed myself and had it not feel so much like a lie?  What if I had listened to the beautiful atheist who said the hand of God reached down and stopped him.  He was sorry, but he couldn't.  

I was sorry too.  That tiny piece of me, the one that saw the blood seep from Jesus' wounds, knew that that man would have appreciated what I was giving him.  What I was taking from him.  But, instead, I continued my star-search for Orion, found him by surprise, and decided that I was exhausted and angry from the rejection of before.  One limitation removed, I could call myself what I had been already.  Woman.  And so I do.  And so I ache.  This is the apple I took from the tree.  I know.  I did not sin, it was not wrong, but I lost a bit of naivety that had protected me from these newly discovered wounds.  My own stigmata.  Passion and suffering are the same. Ishtar told me.