Symptoms of sensuality were there even then,
in my ten-year-old asceticism:
fashioning crowns of thorns for myself
out of the metal bottoms of votive candles
and wearing them to bed, along with a homemade version
of a hair shirt, determined to mortify my flesh
in quest of nothing less than sainthood.
At eleven I read the Lives of the Saints
and scrutinized my palms for signs of the stigmata.
I had to admit that martyrdom
did not seem a realistic possibility,
but I kept hoping for a vision of the Virgin
like the ones Catherine of Sienna had:
concentrating hard, I'd fasten my gaze on
the statue in Saint Henry's Church,
praying it would move or speak to me,
but it never did.
Twelve years old, I built May altars in my bedroom:
Mary enshrined in a bower of dandelions and candle-ends,
draped with my best silk scarves.
At thirteen, I discovered masturbation,
got pimples, grew pubic hair, and began to bleed
far from the proper sites for real stigmata.
It was then I decided that a God
vindictive enough to give me the means to ecstasy,
then cast me into everlasting fire for using it,
was not a fit object for worship.
C 1998, by Judith Searle
