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