A dove leapt right out of Joan of Arc’s mouth. If I were burning at the stake a dishrag would leap right out of my mouth. Today, a young woman held the door open for me the whole time I descended the stairs while repeating thank you, thank you, thank you. Did I think I was casting a spell? Joan was nineteen when she burned to death. Did she ever touch her breasts? That was the year I lay in a road in Spain and picked pieces of skull out of my hair. It was possible to believe stone was the same as bone. At sixteen she was already a military tactician; later, in the heretic cells, her horse-bowed legs forced inside a skirt, she deflected every semantic trap the inquisitors set for her. I sat in the library reading biographies—what could I do? I didn’t know why Vaseline was funny; that rubbers were a kind of shoe. This morning, however, wasn’t it you who stopped me on the street to say the color of my dress was holy?