Hail Mary, Full of Grace

June 20, 2023

​Nyamata

Butterflies yellow and white, like floating tissue  

Starlight holes in the roof, casting violent beams onto a rubble floor 

Children learning, children laughing, children playing 



Please be seated 



Paper cranes 

Handwritten love notes in languages I cannot understand

Mounds of clothes riddled by blood clay and bullets 



Pray for us 



A pinky cream baby dress with old brown blood soaking the front, as if from a messy dinner with no bib. Three ruffles at the hem, puffy sleeves, a bow at the collar. Her bones are somewhere here. 



Pray for us 



More children’s clothes - blue shorts, a sweater vest, a tiny t-shirt

 

Boxes and boxes of clothes in various sizes, stored separate from the mountains on pews



Please kneel. 



A cracked baptismal font 

A blown-out sacristie 

Helpless rosaries  

A brown lizard guarding coffins full of indiscriminate bones 

Piles of skulls femurs and forearms 



Muzungu Mary, full of grace 



Banana trees

Children laughing, children playing 

The midday bell rings them home 



Go in peace to love and serve 

Ave Maria