Your body, bent into the prayer position so long
you became stuck that way. Just as your mother said you would.
Like those Chinese cats stuffed into bottles;
your body, maturing all wrong just to fill up the spaces.
You find you talk to everyone as though they are
a dear sweet angel, wash their feet and leave them
smiling and curious. You find your elbows have worn
down to bone. Your body, on it's knees as it should be. blood running gold, and them, lapping it up like the stray lambs they are.

Dear mother,

I ask you how far we are from heaven.You are hunched over the Sunday paper like a patient gargoyle. Tongue snaking around in your mouth, as if the answer is hidden between your teeth.

Dear mother,

You hum holy bars in the kitchenette.
say "hallelujah means praise yahweh, praise the lord"
say "angels must rest on the tongue of that word"
say "angels, oh angels hallelujah, hallelujah, rest in me"

but you haven't slept in weeks.
I hear you sob-sigh into the night like a prayer, like your table lamp is the closest thing to heavens gates.

Dear mother,

Sometimes I wish I could still pray with you. Pluck off our sorrow feathers and watch the angels carry them through the ceiling.
I might hold your hand like a steady branch
and breathe free.

but I know I'd start laughing, or crying.
and both are said to be inappropriate during prayer.

Dear mother,

What rests upon your tongue, but the paste of morning?
The old words of dead men? The wet remains of one thousand
war defeats? What rests there but your own salvation saliva?

Dear mother,

You ask me why.
There is the tribal dance of your sunday skirt. The
bible mold in our kitchen window sill. There is my heart
pressing into hellfire, pressing to pages like hot india ink.
There is your worship stricken face, like a freshly dug hole.

but there is no saying.

dear mother,

You ask me why don't go to church anymore.
I'm sorry, but there is no saying. There is only the cross shaped groove in the grass where I used to lay, post-mortum stiff, awaiting the holy down pore.

Dear mother,

There are 1,260 promises given in the bible.
LORD appears 7,736 times and there are 3,294 questions asked.

But there is no saying. There is no pulse in an old
promise. The night still swallows us unconscious,
and we search for LORD under our beds. We stand atop
mountains, awaiting the transfiguration. Climb back down after a few days, our skirts full of hopeful dirt. We lay over our graves
awaiting answers, knowing we'll sink into them eventually.
LORD appears zero times.
there are zero answers given.
there are zero promises kept.

dear mother,

praise yahweh, praise the lord.
but there is no saying.
hallelujah, there is not.