Nancy Devine

An Important Event

My father was said to have held me up in church the morning I was baptized…from the font gentle wet on my crown, the pastor’s hand shedding something small of itself on me, a becoming I still don’t understand, what my father wanted the congregation to see.

I can’t remember but picture my mouth trying to skewer air as I cried out the knowledge of my lungs, the anguish of just being as well as the joy of voice, the sound I had that I push forward every day, sometimes as music, other times another kind of composition.