The girl who tasted God
They tell us not to speak after sundown.
Our mouths are meant for prayer, not noise. A girl who speaks in darkness speaks to herself, they say, and there is nothing more dangerous than a girl alone with her voice. It was Sister Celine who first said that to me, pressing a finger to her lips with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Her teeth were perfect and white, like a row of bones lined up for display. I imagined them rattling in a glass box. I imagined pulling them out, one by one, to see what sound she’d make.
We are fifty-three girls in the retreat. We are white-shirted, soft-spoken, freshly laundered. The nuns—or "guides," as they call themselves—do not wear habits. They wear cream linen and gold pins shaped like tongues. The walls are white. The floors are cold. There are no mirrors. They say mirrors reflect pride, and pride is the root of sin, but it’s more than that. When I close my eyes, I sometimes think I can see my reflection anyway—moving differently than me, mouth open when mine is closed.
My name is Magdalene. My mother cried when I was chosen. She pressed my hand to her chest and said I’d been marked since birth, said she’d always known there was something special rotting inside me—though she didn’t use the word rot. She said divine. I think they mean the same thing sometimes.
The bus ride took four hours from the city. The windows fogged up halfway there, and the girl next to me kept tracing crosses into the condensation. When we arrived at the gates of the Sanctuary of the Living Flame, one of the guides stood barefoot on gravel and marked our foreheads with ash. Not in a cross, but a circle. A perfect, dark ring that felt like oil pressed into my skin. No one explained. No one ever explains.
Inside, they took our phones. Our mirrors. Our makeup. Our snacks. One girl cried when they threw away her lip balm. They told her to offer it up. I watched her stare at the trash can like it had swallowed a part of her soul.
"Desire is the birthplace of martyrdom," said Sister Celine. Her eyes were gold-brown and impossible to look away from, like something that could hold fire without being burned. She smiled as they passed out plain white cotton robes and silence.
That night, we lay in rows of narrow cots, each with a wooden crucifix above it and a candle at its base. I found a prayer card under my mattress. It was burnt at the edges, soft as cloth. A child’s face was drawn in graphite—her mouth open, teeth tiny and sharp like animal fangs. Her eyes were smudged out.
On the back, in slanted handwriting: She tasted God and never hungered again.
I did not sleep. The candle flickered all night. I kept staring at the girl’s face, wondering if her mouth had ever closed again.
The days follow ritual. We wake at 4 a.m. to sing to the Little Saint, a child martyr who is not canonized but whose story is known by every girl in the retreat. She bled from her throat and her palms. They say she swallowed fire during Mass. They say she opened her mouth and doves fell out, their wings burned black. She said, "He asked for my voice."
We pray in silence, write letters to saints, fast every third day. If you vomit from the fasting, you're told you are releasing shame. If you faint, they carry you gently and kiss your forehead like you’re already gone. There are girls who try to faint on purpose. There are girls who cut prayer lines into their arms with fingernails and pass it off as devotion.
On the fourth day, Sister Celine calls us into the chapel.
There is no cross. Only a mirror framed in candles. The glass is fogged, but not from breath. It seems to pulse. I keep thinking I see things in it—a mouth too wide, a tongue moving independently, teeth that glint like mirrors themselves.
"The body is a chalice," she says. "But the mouth is where He enters. You must be made empty to be filled."
She walks down the aisle with a roll of duct tape. It is the industrial kind—thick, silver, fibrous. One by one, she tapes our mouths shut. We do not protest. We are obedient.
I feel the glue pull at my skin. I feel my breath wet the fabric. I feel—something else. A tingling. A pressure. A hunger that isn’t mine.
That night, I dream of biting the sun. Of swallowing gold. Of blood that tastes like rust and oranges. I wake up crying, but I don't know if it's from fear or longing.
Girls start behaving strangely.
Lydia, the girl in the cot beside mine, begins weeping during meals. Not loudly—just a quiet, persistent sobbing as she stares at her bowl of boiled oats. She says she dreams of the Little Saint every night. "She opens her mouth," Lydia whispers, trembling, "and bees come out."
Another girl, Sarah, pierces her tongue with a pencil lead. When they find her, she’s humming through the hole, blood trailing down her chin. She says it makes the prayers go in faster. Her breath smells like metal and graphite. No one cleans the blood. They leave it as a sign.
Sister Celine only nods. "She’s preparing."
For what, no one says.
On the seventh day, they say the Ascension is coming. We are told to choose our wound.
Some girls choose their knees. They kneel and pray until the skin splits and stains the floor. Others fast until their lips crack and their ribs show like scaffolding. One girl shaves her head and sleeps outside in the rain, whispering psalms into the mud until her mouth fills with grit.
I don’t know what to choose. Nothing feels right. Nothing feels enough. My body still feels full. Impure. Unworthy.
That night, I sit on the floor of the dormitory bathroom and cut the inside of my cheek with the edge of my retainer. I press it slowly, deliberately, until the blood pools, thick and syrupy. My mouth fills with warmth. I do not spit it out. I swallow.
It tastes like metal. It tastes like light. It tastes like something I can’t name.
Lydia disappears. Her cot is stripped. Her candle is snuffed. The guides won’t say where she went. No one else asks.
But I see her that night in the chapel. She’s kneeling in front of the mirror, though the chapel is supposed to be locked. Her back is arched, her neck strained, her mouth wide open like she's drinking something that isn't there. Her tongue is glowing. It pulses like a wound. Like a birth.
She turns to me and says, "He’s in the blood. I tasted Him."
Her voice is not hers. It’s deeper, older, echoing from some hollow place behind her ribs.
The mirror flickers. My mouth tastes of ash. I do not remember entering the chapel.
On the final day, they bring us to the cliffs.
The wind screams like something dying. The sky is white and burning, blank as a bandage. Sister Celine carries a chalice of oil, thick and dark and red.
"The girl who is chosen will never hunger again," she says.
She looks at me.
I open my mouth.
And something opens back.