I was so desperate to believe you I fed my gnawing gut a decorated lie.
I sat fidgeting in the hard place,
pretending to watch tv, glancing instead back toward you
tinted blue-electric, shadows dancing on your socks where they held down the floor.
I wanted to be sure, to let it go, to be anywhere else but here. To be someone different.
But I had no voice.
It was the dream I couldn’t wash out. It scratched me from then inside when I tried to smile and entertain you with my tricks.
It did not help when you told me to look next to the bed, where it lay. How could a Bible live here? I wondered.