Sanctimonious

Behind the junkyard where I used 

to wish myself away—the child’s

heart you kept buried 

beneath steel, & me calling

it stupid, saying “this 

is where things go 

to forget themselves,” but you

kept believing we’re one

far-flung miracle from heaven, and I, as

wingless as ever, wanting desperately

to believe you.

The phone rang off the hook to the edge 

of a cliff where I

felt my body melt into 

a sunset of afterwords – like 

when you said you’d keep track of us & 

I said sorry, I keep forgetting the days

you meant “keep” like a fossil record, 

like closing a fist of limestone around 

Sundays you should have spent in church, 

and my pendulum heart free-swinging, 

the word finite crashing through 

the wall of it when I heard. I wish 

Jesus didn’t die for us. His piety is a

honey-beckoned prison; we’re suffocating 

in forgiveness.

Days that I pray are the most blasphemous,

on my knees screaming that God 

is rich in blood diamonds & His son

is a nepo baby. 

I want to call and tell you: God is a bad liar 

and Jesus still loves you—but of course 

you know this already. I think of you in 

the junkyard / I think 

of you in the graveyard, 

slipping your heart inside that 

too-forgiving soil 

I think 

of bodies of steel, bodies 

of flesh, all

lost in that 

darkness of sanctity—and Jesus’ face

backlit against the clouds, palms 

opening towards me,

like begging

for spare change.