his lips to be knocked away by fists pulling steady on the rope they'd hurled over the center beam. And up he rose to the plaster face where they left him upside down to circle the air, blood dripping from his nose, his stole of shoes bumping the silent chest, its painted veins swelling in votive light, his own beginning to pound in his temples; the gathered candles bunching his shadow on the stationed walls, heavy breathing and a strangled voice blurring in his ears, lost in the slow dark turning toward dawn. They've allowed her to stay the night, to sit in a metal chair and guard her husband's sleep, to watch the gauze darken at his throat, the hole in his neck rising pink around the rim. Sometime near dawn, she leaves him and heads for the double doors at the end of the hall; once inside, her fingers fly over the operating table. On the floor she crawls in small circles about the center of the room; she is sure she will find the patch of skin they took. She will know it by the stubble left on the outer side when she shaved him hastily herself this morning. When she finds it, she will go to him. She will hold the wafer up to the window, up to the cleansing sun; she will lick the edges and secure it to the sides of the hole healing open like a nostril. Barebacked and handcuffed to a post