How I've missed your extraordinary voice. I've always been stuck on Santa Lucia, with her eyeballs on a plate; I ran into a statue of her in a dusty back hallway of a church basement. Evocative, but not as evocative as your piece. Write on, Rebecca Brown.
And what are we enacting with all those paper hearts for Valentine's Day (a saint, too, in jail, sending love notes)? The heart, constant until it's not.