It’s been two years since we lay bare
skinned and breathless beneath broken-in sheets, predominantly
pale limbs tangled like treetop canopies and we spoke
in soft syllables and pressing skin against skin, let the slowly growing Sunday
morning sunlight watch us through the window.
Half-clothed and waxing Philosophic
I said prayers to you
I no longer mean.
That’s the way romance works, I think
softly to myself as the quiet eyed girl
at the counter of the local Barnes & Noble rings
up my book:
a new bible, words of Christ
in red. She doesn’t say a word.
I’ve spent so long hiding
from God like bad history
between friends: if I ignore it long enough
it may go away, and too long
being afraid to believe anything
greater than me might exist but now I know
there are many things greater than me.
And all these thoughts congeal in the cool night
air because it’s Saturday and my sheets
are usually empty and my hands smell
like smoke and my head
is still cloudy and thick, and in the back of my head
I never feel your air breath out: I’m worried
I’m only seeing God to replace you.
because a long time ago in the still
and fuzzy times of childhood, where each truth told
makes a little fold and sets a heavy crease inside your brain
a man with a black suit and blue tie
asserted so I would never forget
where exactly we go when we die
when God doesn’t
love you.
This is the first poem and (unfortunately) first assignment of the new year. Still a rough draft.
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