Is Love | Frances Gapper

After she got beaten up and died, I started seeing her again. Good of her to favour me with holy visions, when she could be swimming in donkey milk or washing His feet and drying them with Her hair.

Rowena love, she calls me.

I find a dropped pound coin and lick it to get the dirt off.

Remember what I told you last time, says Holy Mother Prostitute, you’ve got to be a channel for the Holy Ghost.

She keeps on and on at me like a pop song. Love is all you need, all they need. All anybody needs is love, Rowena love. And she recommends a spiritual exercise, which is to offer up the misery.

Me crying, I don’t know how.

Visit my shrine, she says. Keep going and you’ll find it. At last I spot her medallion in the chip shop. A woman gives me a free pickled egg and we put our hands together in prayer like innocent children.

A man in the dark street asks how much. Touching his poor cheek, I gaze upon him with Love.

It’s happening, serious.

I feel so much pain, but then it stops. Although I’m not dead yet, my body has given up hope.

My blood is bright on the paving stones.

I still don’t know how.

Frances Gapper lives in the UK's Black Country and writes very short stories. Recent work in Blink-Ink, Versification, Twin Pies, Truffle Lit, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sledgehammer, Stone of Madness.