you learned god and kept him locked in a sonnet. here is the church. here is your head bowed and your hands shaking. here is a sunday without bread.
here is the steeple. in second grade you write a song about a girl, a spell you create. you sing together a stitched dream - and then you burn it, knowing the problem is too great, for bigger people, for adults. you pocket shame so generously. fistfuls of the stuff.
open the doors, here’s all the people. the flipped and wiggled fingers give you the chills. each finger a person, each line in your hand a branch you will not walk on. you picture each life you could live like a hangnail - choosing only the good-girl, only the right-for-you.
you will not make your grandmother unhappy. you will marry the right man even if he is not right, and you will have his kids even if they are your kids and he is no father to them, and you will live in the small apartment of matrimonial bliss, and he will kiss you with distraction. you will be a good and godly girl and you will hold control in your fist and you will never stray from this.
your mother warns you - don’t get attached to a mistake just because you took a lot of time making it. he is not a mistake, right?
you will not splinter your family. you will not embarrass your parents. you will not be that cousin or that wedding, you will marry this man who cannot remember to call you, and you will be five years down the line still whispering is-this-happy to yourself in the mirror. you will stand in the shower with your long hair and you will know this is just-it and that settling is good and that god will be with you at the altar.
here is the church. you fold your hands in prayer. here is the steeple. your spine like a knife.
the angel chorus comes back when you meet her. the song of your second grade witch-spell unfolding. she smells like being outside, and candlelight, and home. she feels like you can unsheathe god and wear him like a cloak. she feels like holy fire. what if, you ask your father, hell is actually cold?
you kneel before the man you will marry since you will stay (this you know, he has broken you so many times and you never actually get up and go) and know this is just it, there’s no better option, you will have to wash her out of you and you will pick the life that is a ring finger and you will never feel anything but scrubbed clean and wrung through and you will hold her name like a brand inside of you and you will be a pillar of the community and pick up after him and tell everyone he’s so good to you.
here’s all the people. but her smell, and this room. eve in the garden, bringing a sword of flame to you. take this and eat. let the kingdom of forbidden knowledge be an open door to you.
