Gap-Toothed Angel
July 2015
She is small the way a bumblebee is small.
I call her Savior, Honeysuckle. When her
bare feet dance across the church tiles, I
know we are caught between heresy and
a hard place. When she leaves her perfume
on my sheets, I don’t want to wash them,
but I do it anyway, then leave them in the river.
She is always telling me, Oh darling please
don’t worry, oh darling God is on my side,
and I can’t tell her I have built a shrine
to anxiety in my closet. I can’t tell her
I dream in loose ends. How do we become
two loose ends? One of us dies? One of us
leaves and never comes back? This world
will chew us up like dirty communion wafers.
There is no hymn for the girl who falls in
love with other girls. So now, we are small
the way something that can be easily crushed
is small. I call her My First Love.
She asks me if I ever loved her in the first place.