the gap between
At night
trying to pray in a way that’s honest to the both of us
I say
for god
Please give this one (next to me) peace relief reprieve rest joy hope calm a full night’s sleep a pause button restoration a moment of slow kind self-directed words something softer than this day has been
Please and Thanks
I say
hands clasped in the dark
slits of light through the blinds
and our breathing
ragged sometimes
slowdeep sometimes
inning and outing
and I hope you heard
**
You pat my stomach
when my breath is bated
and I hold it just a second longer
Some stubborn bone tweaked and hungry for a comeback
for some space to be unseenunwatchedunknown
but the tap is a lovemove
a nod toward what I already know
but I’m blurry-eyed and muddle-brained
and cat-at-the-lip-of-the-pre-vet-carrier strong-headed
and I do not want to breathe
until I want to breathe
and I do not want to breathe just yet
**
You’re at your door
looking curbward
and I’m leaving
in the past-my-bedtime predawn
and your look is wet and deepcold
I think it has to do with god
and the way you found out
I don’t believe
on the sidewalk
with your neighbor
who shares my name.
I had no way to know he was a god-rooted figure in your life.
and here I was
saying how wild it was to have an overlap in my life
with the sisters across the street
at Canaan
they held hands and prayed over my house before it went up
and saw my birth to my
horse-kicked, rib-cracked, spleen-burst mother
a miracle
which it was
They’ve been guarding over me since then
and yet their life feels so removed from what I could imagine for myself
I said to my namelgänger
devoted, full-out, as it is, to their one-and-only
Why I said anything at all to him
is beyond me now
but the look on your face at the door
is still with me
and your eyes are deepcold in your voice sometimes
when we talk in the night
almost always the night
about the gap between faith and not