The Wait

The priest performs his sleight-of-hand to a nearly empty cathedral: two women sit in a back pew, flanked by three black garbage bags containing their worldly possessions. The stained-glass windows are dull with November light. –What’s he saying? –It doesn’t matter. Wait. There will be free samples at the end. Under the pew, safe from the janitor’s mop, the house spider has eaten all her children. On the back wall of the sacristy, the sworn enemy of time continues to tick.