A pale evening sun seeps in and bathes his aching body as he reaches out for the glass of lukewarm water his beloved Mala has left by his bedside. His throat feels raw from all those primal grunts and groans and his arms are heavy as if clad in cold iron chains. He lifts himself into the costume, musty shreds of a t-shirt and jeans bleached under the skylight then streaked artfully in red ink. He moves slowly, pours himself in, lets his mouth hang open then runs his tongue over his cracked bleeding lips…
Read MoreYou’ve been so good—so good— that when your friend meets you at the airport, she says, you look like a bird. You smile. No, you say, no, I’ve still got a long way to go. You’re grinning all the way through the flight at the thought. This new plan you’re on takes commitment, but you’re sure you can stay on track so you’ve packed two medium hard boiled eggs—no salt—your weighed baggie of dry oats, your peeled apple, your gallon jug of water, emptied and ready…
Read MoreYou wish not to leave the hospital. Alone in a new country, you have nowhere else to go. When you smile at your child, it is your first betrayal. Secretly, you withhold your love from her to devote it to another—the dream that you blindly followed across the ocean because you believed its promises.
Read MoreAt Sabbath School, we sing Jesus loves me this I know and I fantasize that I’m there, a stick-figure brown girl, a hyphen in the spectrum of red and yellow, black and white kids on Jesus’ lap as per that idyllic painting on our bedroom wall. Creamy robe and skin, butterscotch hair, sad sky-blue eyes.
The Bible that Mama quotes mostly admonishes us to serve, purify, labor, eke our way to heaven. Gawwd, God. You’re Mean Joe Green. Meek, depraved, unworthy us, pining for your son Jesus’ ivory lap. For the Bible tells me so. My timid heart does not tell me so. Little ones to him belong. My itchy, rashy body does not belong. They are weak but he is strong. I’m curled on the ground, a question mark at Jesus’ legs…
Read MoreThere is no cell or spore or strand of DNA that can be pointed to as a lichen: it’s the space between the algae and fungi that is the lichen. It is the space between you and your partner that is love. It is the space between our consciousness and the collective unconscious that is our self…
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