Pretend that you are a snake

Pretend that the ground you slither on is live coals,
the lilacs are in bloom,
and there is an old woman after you with a shovel

Pretend the coals burn you, belly down,
and the old woman's rusted shovel finds the back of your neck
like a blade

Pretend the lilacs are the last thing you see
as your head is severed
Pretend the coals cremate you more or less instantly

You can be reborn a bird
if you burn all the heaviness
out of you and you can fly away

You can be reborn with legs and feet to skip across the coals
and you can dance quickly so you never even feel their heat

And when the lilacs bloom
in May on Helen and Constantine's feast day
you can wear them as a crown

As if you've never been burned and never felt the sting of change

I wanted there to be a word
For the space between
Her penultimate breath and her last one
There were no words
Nobody makes them like that anymore
If I had to pick one though it would be
A word like a waiting room or
A word like an anvil or
A word like being called on when you don't know the answer

But that moment wasn't so much
A moment as a pregnancy
Of emotions
And it wasn't so much
The expectation of my feelings
Being born as it was
The end of her feeling
Anything she could hope to use
Words for

*If I started writing now I wouldn't even know where to begin

After runs last August
I used to find the church unlocked
And I'd lay on my back
Under the altar
Sweat soaking into the
Blood-of-Christ colored carpet
Lily-scent
Inhaling deeply
I felt the waves wash over me
I felt the earth breathe
And I remembered one night
I was thirteen
Learning catechism
When the pastor told me
"Human and divine are the same things."

I ran to the church last time I visited home
And found the doors locked
So I laid on the ancient concrete of the parking lot
Exhaling deeply
The pollen and the sweat smell and the cut grass of moments
Passing
The blood pounding in my ears sounded like truth
And when I found a cut under the salt on my shin
Somehow it tasted like honey

He pieces her together: eggshells
She pulls him apart: saltwater
And outside it is always rose-light
And paper boats and some sweet breeze that nobody asked for
Outside it's all honeysuckle vining up the pasture fence

She falls asleep small against his tallness
He sleeps like a dog in the sun
If the truck keeps running
It's a metaphor for their relationship
If the truck stops it's foreboding

She loves him: pins and needles
He loves her: turquoise jewelry
And they're forever burning like
Matches on fingertips
Forever noticing new wrinkles in their reflections
As the mirror stays the same with age

"Do you still think you're going to marry me?"

"I won't let you get away again," he says,
Knowing she's young and she's fast

She smiles like pawn shop diamonds
Knowing he's lucky to have her
And having never felt so stupid
In her wicked wayward life

Cancer
That grew so
Big it swallowed the sun
Mercury venus earth mars jupiter saturn
Like juicy blinking pacman dots
And pluto a non-planetary cherry
On top

"Kiss me," you said into the
Microphone *"I don't want to die
a ******."