I liked the way you and your crisscrossed legs sat on my middle-school-ignorant navy-blue and daisy-patterned comforter, watching, hearing,
the way your fingers crept towards the neck of my ukulele while the magnetized look in your eyes drew mine and my own fingers fell slack in divine-driven intrigue,
the way you and your eyes full of quiet study and wisdom, like worship, like your respect of this instrument as not wood but as hundreds of years of polished amber-tinted history has earned you ownership, and it does.
you and your fingers then spun aching minor chords, like worship, like somehow, in the sparkling incensed-violet melody you spilled all over me in my righteous nihilism
you and your body became an offering, and the wood
burned my fingertips when you handed it back to me, ashamed and awe-stricken, like worship, like your life is an offering, and even
when I found the notes you played (on this instrument that is not mine) 200 days and 200 nights after I knew you and your legs sitting on my bed and your multidimensional fingers, worshipping,
no matter what I tell myself, I am not a believer in beyond, and pretending to pray just reeks of my own mortality.