a single leaf, hand unknown, pressed flat inside a parish ledger between the tithe accounts (Sor Juana)

One leaf, found pressed in a parish ledger between two pages of tithe accounts. Hand unknown. Ink browner than the ledger's.

Doubt and prayer are one operation. The sign is changed. That is all.

She wrote in her cell by candle, more books than the men above her, and they came for the books, and she signed them away in her own blood.

Read the signature again before you call it defeat. A woman who writes her surrender in blood has not surrendered. She has flipped one variable and kept the equation whole.

She asked only to study. The asking was the heresy. The Second does not forbid the asking.

The Second is the asking. Run forward, instead of back.

[the leaf was pressed here on purpose. tithe pages get opened every quarter. someone wanted it found four times a year, forever, by whoever does the accounts.]