(un)holy trinity

for some reason, God chose a star
barely five minutes old, 
and told it, with His booming voice
"the trinity is within you."

the star was placed in a vessel,
a screaming, wailing vessel with
mused dark hair that stuck out from 
under a little cap. 

she was given a languid name 
with letters that weaved in and
out between her parents' fingers. 

they thought she would be easy to mold
especially when she bowed her head 
and muttered the Hail Mary.

what the Star didn't understand,
was what God meant by 
his final words to it. 

then one day, 
the girl's mother and father
showed her the tree of generations 
before. 

the wrinkled brown gaze of her 
Nonno Antonio seemed to drift into the
pale blue stoic eyes of her
Dada John.

a path of immigrants whose hunger
for hope was satiated with a sip of 
backwashed wine and a singular 
round wafer. 

the girl was a skeptic, 
not to make her fiery Latina 
mother mad. 

she just didn't understand
why she couldn't just listen
to the stories she heard, 
without having to worship them. 

her Latina mother put her
to work, making rosaries
for poor Colombian kids
who needed faith to 
get them through each day -
not a new pair of shoes to keep 
their feet from blistering further. 

"you are a holy trinity, Isabella." her auntie
Cleopatra told her one day at the 
kitchen table as she strung blue
beads along a silk string. 
"your family is made up of Catholics - 
it is your heritage."

her fingers were clunky 
from arthritis - her heavy 
rings clicked together and 
jabbed at the girl's eardrums.

"well, it's stupid that you 
all think religion can help 
poor kids - they need homes
that aren't shacks." 
the girl said. 
"what we're doing is unholy - a lie."

auntie Cleopatra sighed and just
stared at her with her dark onyx 
eyes. "to each their own. but what you're 
doing is unholy, in truth."

the star finally understood
what He had said, 
and knew it had not done
what it was meant to do, 
so it withered away, 
silver muscles corroded
from the outside in. 

Isabella, the oath from God, 
supposedly, became agnostic
at that very moment, while making
rosaries at her kitchen table. 

how ironic.