The organ’s aria rang out from the National Cathedral, quivering free the most delicate of the cherry blossom petals with its chords, littering the sidewalks of Wisconsin Avenue with belated valentines as she took her dog out on Easter Sunday

morning, alone, too early to call anyone just to say hi, not even her devout, Catholic mother. And this woman’s lonely, atheist heart found itself brushing her hair for her, covering her night-old eyeliner with a pair of glasses, pulling up stockings underneath a floral dress and pink cardigan, walking her, as if on a leash, the half mile to childhood familiarity in the shape of a pew and a hymnal. Is it so surprising though? When her heart knew she needed something, anything, even if it was only to admire Romanesque architecture and stained glass? To fall trance to the hollow murmur of responsorial psalms? She, like her mother, had held onto so much for so long with

-out a place for it all to go. Hadn’t she already spent a year pretending untruths were true for the sake of a quiet pulse and six hours of sleep each night? Hadn’t she already wished on dandelion seeds and sidewalk pennies, birthday candles and stars and nothing at all to manifest her unrelenting daydreams into reality? What would one more try hurt? What are prayers, anyway, if they are not the release of our desperate, captive hopes into the wild?