Lucinda Kempe ~ Jeanne d’Arc

I woke up miss­ing my big toe, my hair in a mul­let, and with a half-eat­en donut on the bed­side com­mode. A shep­herd preached in the court­yard and the witch had parked her broom in the mid­dle of the dri­ve. Some kids were smack­ing each oth­er sil­ly with its fun­ny end.

I clam­bered up from the linens, grabbed the donut and head­ed to the yard.

The kids point­ed at my hair and the ooz­ing stump of toe.

I had a cross on my T‑shirt and wore a suit of chainmail.

“Hit her in the tit­ty with a hard-boiled egg,” they screamed.

The Templar came at me with his sword. He pushed it in and I heard my uterus scream. Something warm pooled between my lips and I saw God smil­ing and wel­com­ing me home.

She hand­ed me a gold­en egg. I offered her the donut with my extend­ed palm.

She ate it.

We healed; we were transcendent.

~

Lucinda Kempe’s work has been pub­lished or is forth­com­ing in b(OINK), Frigg, r.kv.r.y., the Summerset Review, and Jellyfish Review. The recip­i­ent of the Joseph Kelly Prize for cre­ative writ­ing in 2015, she’s an M.F.A. can­di­date in writ­ing and cre­ative lit­er­a­ture at Stony Brook University. She has just com­plet­ed her memoir.