The Taco John’s employs a woman, her thick body a prayer, with wild tatoos and a friendly smile, who is a neighbor. She uses the word honey instead of sir. She is as much a sister as a nun in that moment. She intones a chaste sisterly love in mentioning that she will soon bring the food with the receipt.

          A second woman calls her thanks and mentions the name honey, with a frame racked by experience a thin petition to God. The order, the sisterhood grows by a second woman as the warm glow of lights of the restaurant are left behind, swallowed by the night.

After the walk home a set of smooth concrete stairs are climbed as worshippers and pilgrims might climb, wearing down the stone with their feet, to a monk on a pillar of stone. The glass security door, any security door is opened and then another set of stairs are climbed and on an apartment door, any apartment door, moving slower than words a sign the holy order, in nature, of, green as the spring of any younger women, with a pair of beady eyes that swivel on a stalk with front legs folded in, of. Simpler than the ornate language of the women if not as complicated is a large and emphatic three four inch praying mantis.