I took my mom to Chili’s
and told her that despite my best efforts
I could no longer keep the Sabbath.
Later, I got into Ben’s car
because we both liked Japanese animation –
the kiddie keening of a schoolgirl
suckered to the arms of a giant squid, and finally
her gallop into the air toward a celestial wardrobe.
A band he liked jacked the sleek necks of their guitars
like bolt action rifles, and were in the news
because of fans who felt them miming
steel and smoke, who could not feel, so smoked
anything that could be lit. I remember
his Adam’s apple bounced on a pulley system
anchored by my five virgin toes.
Yet he was in total control, held in umbra
like an Anglerfish nestled in pressurized sand.
I got a buzz cut, and couldn’t give anyone the satisfaction
of saying who it was about.
The truth was, there was a hallway in upstate New York
running through the center of my voice, fattening it to silence.
But I screamed about bananas and knives turned upward
in the dishwasher, louder than I had ever screamed about
anything.
I didn’t know then to tell a boy when a banana is a banana,
or when it is just something that was once yellow.
I sent messages in nine point font
arcing through the internet, asking him
do you believe in our Heavenly Father,
forking a bolt through a dome of ozone
at the same time He is flagging a job application for HR
and letting someone fall down the subway stairs? I asked him,
Do you believe I exist, at the end of a suite of grocery receipts
and car payments, to ultimately fall down the subway stairs,
undignified, with my skirt up? When I should have said,
here is my body, no one has been here
only God.
Photograph © Simon, Metro Jaures, 2014
