"God's really a nice guy
once you get to know
Him,"
they said
after the flood

Is it really
any wonder that
our ancestors
looked at the
celestial sphere
they saw the seemingly
random array of stars
and instead of feeling
meaningless created
a narrative of
constellations
flinging
Orion
Taurus
and Ursa
at the temple walls
that make up our
night sky,
ever moving but
staying the same

You were thinking about God all night. If only you could without suffering sin, you’d swear it was true. Prayers clung to the gloss on your lips. You’d shaken your hair loose from the day’s mistakes, apologized for those that you chose to remember. But still, your body was a live wire.

Your fingers were knotted up in the chain of your grandmother’s cross when your first stranger offered you a drink. His smile boasted of layover stays in European cities, of glassy-eyed girls spread just for him, all neat and pretty on a silk duvet. You swallowed down your fears and let him order for you, just nodding his way so he wouldn’t get to hear your voice. A scotch on the rocks to ease your nerves, you reassured Him, and nothing more.

Let me slip into something a little more comfortable…you breathed easier in a strapless dress, a tight skin of black satin worth half of a month’s rent and all of your dignity. Eyes you didn’t recognize skimmed over more of your body than you let your own mother see. The little girl she raised would have been afraid. The good Lord Himself was a skeptic, a dwindling shadow of a doubt still stuck in the doorway. …She’s so exposed, can she really offer any more parts of herself to the world, or has it all gone?

You’d just gotten done with praying for the ****** when one of them shows up at your feet to thank you. You try to forget. You don’t want to remember that you asked for her in your sleep. She is a gift…not from God. You feel as you would have if you had seen her naked. Her white dress wraps high enough around her neck to make you second-guess your hands.

Touch…The thought hits you like a freight train and makes you sway. She laughs, guess I shouldn’t have gotten you this drink, huh? You’re halfway finished with the glass she gave you before you tell her you’re okay.

A hangover may keep you from church in the morning.

Just seemed like you needed to unwind.

God would have healed your heart then. Only you start to think now that the pain of someone else may be what keeps you alive.

Maybe a dance will help.

Her hand is warm as she leads you out onto the floor. Instead of letting go, her fingers squeeze the spaces in between yours. She leans in so she can hear you speak above the pounding of the bass. When she tosses her hair, she smells soft, like fresh roses. You feel her thorns press into your sides like the fingernails digging into your chest, and the pain breathes new life into you.

She dances up against you with her body like a hurricane. The shallow breaths against your neck are no longer just that. They are howling gusts, a swirling mass of a storm that comes to life in glaring black-and-white headlines, “disaster of the ages”, “the bullet you can’t outrun”. They are screaming at you to get a grip before you crash to the ground, another casualty in her wake.

Her hand swims up your dress to touch you between your thighs. You let her. It’s okay. You ease into her, let your eyes roll back for her. You kiss her unholy, her tongue tasting like redemption. The strokes of her fingers take you as close to Heaven as you’ll ever get.

Forgive me, Father, for I am sin.

My drug of choice
The forbidden fruit I dare to taste
You are the answer
To the questions my heart speaks
My heart races uncontrollably
At the mere thought of seeing you again
Our hands touch and
You set off an explosion in my soul
Our energies connect and intertwine
Like the branches of two trees
Hugging and trailing along one another
And eventually growing together as one

Summer

The sun glistened off beads of sweat gathering on her neck
Breeze through dark curls
Laughing
They lay on a checkered blanket sprawled on the grass
She points at the clouds
Shapes only she could see

Winter

Warm sweaters
Cuddling under blankets
Hot chocolate
Movies and popcorn you buy in a tin
She always found her socks in the strangest places in the apartment
Spring
The clouds looked too gray
And the hot chocolate just tasted like hot water

Summer

The air conditioning was broken
Humidity made all of the cardboard boxes damp
The apartment was emptier than it’d been in a while
She found a sock under her bed while she was trying to clean her smell out of the bed room
There was a dark hair still on her pillow
She stripped the sheets and threw them in a basket

Fall

It’s raining all the time
The city is noisy
And headlights keeping shining through the windows
The sheets are still in a basket
The sock is still under her bed
Winter
She is always in bed
Three days call ins
On the fourth day she took a shower
Put on a suit jacket
And stepped out in the cold
She forgot it snowed
She forgot boots

Spring

She sat on the floor
The apartment was still empty
She stared at the basket
And an empty popcorn tin in her closet
She got up
Lifted the basket
Washed the sheets

Summer

She sits on a train
Her hair is in a bun
She is wearing a sweater
The city was too much now
It’s okay
She drinks hot chocolate
It’s okay