sunday school teacher breaks chalk pokes sharp the dot of our terminus remainder drags long-lined across the board eternal life i find heaven’s shape cruel lonely white stripe imprismed by evergreen slate pinprick-me seems limited child-time crawls impossible each day infinite God
was smaller then he’d not created homework divorce dysphoria tame God didn’t prickle skin like my daddy words made flesh goosebump dots failed follicles sought to warm a virgin baby drowned in time to be fathomable like me underwater i leadlined a book i couldn’t yet read light refracted cracked prismatic my stained glass heart the weight of all those shapely
veins sunday afternoon surface at Île de la Jatte shapes cease to be Seurat’s calm a mirage just an obsessive god woodpeckering paint plotting points like stars pinpricks imprisoned by x-y quadrants hanged glass frame far too many to dote on each of us we snatch our moment before we dry cut in line though they tell me the father never runs out of time
to love i sit with seablue casted arm snapped this time last week by Dad make-believing as a grizzly bear i try to shape letters with my bad hand preschool worksheet dashed lines of my flesh phantom me hazy hospital gods who set my arm i woke spoke with them dotted surgeryward-slurredword they said do not be afraid they don't know pristine
blood's not for me my sister and i stuck in scrupulosity prisoners to cleansing prayer we worship scandalous particularities of time erased not by some savior bridging liminal space but by minds dotted yellow orange sometimes red doctor told me hold still shaped my bones back in place didn't fix the fracture so i understand God & my parents' morse-code vows snapped chalk they aligned
my theology with my set skeleton but i color outside the lines when no one can see my seafloor shadow friend prisms from the page scribbles on my clubhand hold still? goddammit they can't tame my ghost yet sunday evening Dad's sand timer creases his palms he waits for Mom to scrabble his mouth shapes bitter the end of patience he snaps we kids connect the dots
between father & word again our comprehension of God slips time hourglasses ocean-crusted chunks our prismed minds take separate shapes: mine in deity's chalked outline hers in his each t crossed each i dotted
dot-dash prison our SOS shapes brilliant lightlines blinds every god in every time