shirelles
monday night
alone in a big house
light the candles
another one of my rituals
born one hour,
dead the next
to make room
for other
prayers
postures
pen tips
but the way candles
flicker in the sweet
soul
is not another ritual
warm life
to the tune of golden
notes
swimming through
once bleak
     once empty
once impure
       air
and suddenly, I am baptized
more than I ever was
in that sterile, dead
chlorine
    more than spent hymns
in drafty cathedrals
       so, the sound lives.


my bed would tilt
           at twelve years old
I'd wake
               startled of the
                       psychic death
spread like bodies after
            a paid for war
I'd scream like the cats
              fighting by the window
at my aunts house
               I would huddle with
my childhood
                     hiding from the puberty
that stalked me
like a jungle cat
               the mind reeled with
my spent pulse and
                 at night
                        under shamed
                   covers
                                 bitten fingertips
the white light
           on the street
                              looking on