The bright blue bottle hit me like a hint of death
      on the breath of Spring.
I imagined it being tossed out a truck window
by underage teens fancying themselves clever
      and mature and immortal

as if the earth had willed upon them
      that her stolen treasure, Aluminum,
be returned or she’d cause their truck keys
      disappear for all eternity.
      I picked up the blue bottle

tried to feel resurrection
      in a recycling sort of way
felt instead only the hollow emptiness
      of mindless eternal reincarnation.
Winter had been long this year and lately
I fantasized resurrection more than usual

at a field where I stopped to listen to meadowlark and field sparrow calling for mates or alerting everyone to the sin of the blue bottle.
Several deer grazed the unseen first greens of Spring near skunk cabbage and coltsfoot.

At a small stream, I cupped my hand into the icy fast water and raised it to my lips, then splashed my face, then splashed some more, more,
then knelt, both knees at the streambed and submersed my face and head,

in self-inflicted baptism
      for my own blue bottle sins,
opened my eyes, exhaled all my blue bubbles, for the longest of repentant moments,
      pulled out of the water
      gasping the holy Spring air
      for dear life

and thereafter walked each step
      in the garden of resurrection.

Lightning
with fiery shades of wrath
woven into its shards
ripped the horizon,
dived into the ocean
to its depths of sedimented pretensions,
baptised it with drops of sulphurous fire,
to a cleansed conscience.

The ocean rose up in a high tide of exuberance,
escorted me to its depths
for the drop of sulphurous fire to baptise me,
to give my yearnings the shape of a flame
that puts my soul on fire.

The sunset's light bathes me like the christening I never received as a baby,
when my flesh was still new and still soft and still;
when the first pulses of pain had not yet rang through my tender heart;
when the first rays of sun had not yet wrinkled my mother's skin;
when the thrumming, buzzing world around me had not yet made my small hands shaky.

I feel the light wash over me but I am blinded by the glare,
my impromptu baptism ending as the sun Himself realizes I am far too gone for any semblance of redemption.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, I know; perhaps if my parents then saw me ******,
saw me now, every dispicable thing about me now,
they would've pushed me under the water as a child, said a prayer and held me there.

I arrive at this rebirth,
a long-awaited taxi pulling up
in a winter’s downpour.
I called this cab years ago,
at that first tiny self hatred
that started it all:
When I stepped on that caterpillar
outside Ms. Harris' class.

The cab arrives at a party.
Small mouths pry:
What do you do?
Heavy brows furrow at:
I forgave myself today.
Strangers ask me my name but
I don’t know what it is so
I dive into the pool
and suddenly everything
is muffled and at peace,
and I am discovering the joy
of my hands
outstretched in the water.

This must be *******:
colors pulse
touches ******
bird songs are Vivaldi,
or maybe this is just
what it’s like
to clasp my hands
to hear the rain
to think one single mundane thought
without shame.

I hail another cab,
but this time my sins
are huddled in the back seat.
They gaze up at me
with familiar pleading eyes.
They caress my cheek
with skeleton fingers.
It’s time to go home
and watch the Price is Right
like we always do.
They are hurt
that I went anywhere
without them.
I stroke their oily hairs
and hold them
as we fall asleep.
But when I come to
they’ve faded away
and I awake
embracing myself.

i want someone to cradle me
someone to bathe my body of myself
someone to run a warm washcloth over my hips and wash away the hurt.
to cluck soothingly.
or be silent.
to take my hands in theirs and guide them away from me.

bend over me in the bath
i am helpless
a child in a woman's body
scrub my back.
get a mug from the kitchen and use it to pour the water over my head like some sort of baptism.
i dont care if the shampoo gets in my eyes
I'll keep them shut.
It will sting like going back in time

once your arms tire of dipping, filling, and pouring again and again,
give me your hand and i will get out.

I'll hold the towel close.
hugging it around my arms like some sort of bat when it sleeps
only im not really upside down

the water will drip from my hair onto the tile.

I will shiver and it will be welcome.

Not sinking
But making waves

Not the end
But a brand new start

Not a dead sacrament
But a living parable
Of the grace of God
Of the love of Christ
Of the empowering of the Holy Spirit

Not a "I'll try"
But a "I do"

In the name of the Father
The Son
And the Holy Spirit

AMEN.