The best part of lent
Are the Fridays when
We can't eat meat
Or before sunset
Because my mom and I drive to McDonald's and eat filet o fish while she smokes her misty ultra lights and I listen to her favourite classic rock station with the windows rolled down watching the wind chill work its way in from Lake Michigan to the trees on Chicago avenue
We talk politics and music and god and then our own lives which always seem so small after
I'll try to work the courage to ask her if she minds if I smoke too
And she will try to ask me how aa is going
"You have cheese on your cheek"
"Oh thanks, you just ashed on your pants"
"Oh thanks"
That'll be it
And that'll be nice
And we'll drive home under the wind chill and soft leaves growing again and soft moon gently shining like her watchful worried eyes
It's only forty days
But Jesus spent those forty with the devil
It's nice to get to know his wife

My skin feels like scales
A piano bench
Metronome passing the time
Impatiently
Perfectly
Living like death
Spreading along Petri dishes
And moving forward in octaves
Like a starving gecko
Eating its own tail

You told me once
"People who attempt suicide
Are just angels trying to go home."
That would explain all the pinpricks on my arms
From where feathers fell out of my wings
And the way you made me feel like I didnt belong
And although I've kept trying
I don't know how I can make it home
When you've torn out so many of my feathers

I liked to think I was in your prayers
Or at least your thoughts from time to time
Like when you burned fudge brownies on Sunday mornings
Or kiss your daughter goodnight
(I heard you got someone pregnant)
I liked to think you held me in the back of your mind
Like the quiet anxiety that you told me
Was begging for your love
I kept you in my prayers, if you were wondering
For exactly 372 days
October 22 2011 I stopped praying for you
I stopped praying
Like a storm cloud suddenly dissipating over Southern California in the middle of a drought
Like the color gray which isn't a color
Just a permanent frown pretending to be a shade of white slightly darker than the viscosity of your eyes rolled in the back of your head
Slightly darker than the background of a text message that I never sent because I erased your number from my palm washing away the gray ink you used to spill your life onto mine
Like oil
Like rain clouds, gray on June 25th 2011 the last time I talked to you
Gray sky like the permanent frown you wear when you walk outside and realize all of your plans are ruined

I liked to think I was your gray rain cloud
Evaporating into the air and into your lungs
Polluted
"Necessary and unnoticed"