I don’t know if they’re zealots or not.
(sitting in the coffee shop,
at the table across from mine)

They could be nice enough people,
just like me and you,
if perhaps,
in my opinion,
a little misguided.

(their conversation hits my rewind button)

It is the holiday season after all.
Folks do like to wear The Christ on their sleeves
like an ugly sweater to an office party.



They can have Jesus.
His birthday is coming up
sooner than later,
so they say.

I never wanted Him
in my passenger seat
after my mom got sick.


Ma strapped her Catholicism on
like Kevlar.
She feared death
nonetheless.

My crippled *** knew in Nixa, Missouri.
When that faith-healer came
to my Grandma's hometown
for a real Southern Baptist
revival.

There was fixin’
to be some preachin’,
some layin’ of the hands.

That preacher-lady,
in her white pantsuit and dyed hair,
coal black;
she asked me what I wished for.

I was a Freshman
at my momma’s
Christian Brothers
alma mater.

So, I told that preacher-lady
that I’d wanted to play football,
I wanted that purple & gold uniform,
I wanted to hold the line,
protect the quarterback,
take the cheerleader to prom,
I wanted the whole thing.

She promised me that I’d have it.
She promised me
the whole shebang.
She pushed on my forehead.
She pushed on my chest.
She whispered:

“Go ahead and let yourself fall over.”

Right then,
I knew she was a fake.
I never fell.
I stood straight-legged,
as tall as I was able.

I sank further into my cerebral palsy.
I took full ownership of it,
right then.

Because it was mine,
it was a part of me,
it made me who
I was supposed to be.

I knew that
right then as well.

That minute,
I knew I’d never need the football,
the uniform,
the cheerleader girlfriend,
none of it.

I’d need me,
myself,
my notebook,
my Robert Frost anthology,
my Metallica tapes,
all the things that Pops had ever said to me,
like:
“As long as you’re happy with who you are, that’s all that matters.”

And, it was.
Honesty was too.
The truth mattered.

It mattered more
than having that phony push on me.
It mattered more
than the show I’d figured out
she was putting on.

(I'm no fool.
And, I'm **** sure not a prop.)

But,
it didn’t stop me
from lifting my crutches up,
catching my balance,
wobbling to the back of the church
while the congregation gawked,
sitting in their pews agape.

When we got back
to Grandma’s house,
I made myself
a bowl of vanilla pudding.

Grandma & Aunt Maxine
told me how disappointed they were
in what I had done,
in the embarrassment of it.

Later, I cried;
told God how disappointed I was
that He'd let me be used like that,
embarrassed like that.

He never responded.
He didn’t care.

We don’t talk anymore;
never have,
really.

I think that we’re,
both of us,
better for it.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublication 2020