Lucia Larsen
I clasp my hands in prayer to keep from scratching my eyes out
penning rebuttals to my prayers in the margins
after unclasping my fingers, do you look over my
shoulder and read the eulogies to my convictions
and in turn scratch out my elegies from your hymnal?
I have never made it as far as your will be done before
I start to get fidgety, clawing at my eyes as if to scrub out
the rebellion rising in my throat, maybe if I started
with our mother I could stomach it, but a watermark
father time hovers under my eyelids like an afterimage
and the dissonance makes me squirm, in the
confession booth I try to explain myself and he
calls it tongues, revering my mystique without
having to understand, absolving me from the
uneasiness (if I humbly and heartily desire it)
but I speak in tongues to mask the desires from
which I seek absolution, so tell me how then
can I be saved? tell me how then the lord will
forgive a heart that does not know its own
language? tell me how then I can be delivered when
I cannot even parse my temptations from the gentle
whisper? my sins from a rich man’s translation?
penning rebuttals to my prayers in the margins
after unclasping my fingers, do you look over my
shoulder and read the eulogies to my convictions
and in turn scratch out my elegies from your hymnal?
I have never made it as far as your will be done before
I start to get fidgety, clawing at my eyes as if to scrub out
the rebellion rising in my throat, maybe if I started
with our mother I could stomach it, but a watermark
father time hovers under my eyelids like an afterimage
and the dissonance makes me squirm, in the
confession booth I try to explain myself and he
calls it tongues, revering my mystique without
having to understand, absolving me from the
uneasiness (if I humbly and heartily desire it)
but I speak in tongues to mask the desires from
which I seek absolution, so tell me how then
can I be saved? tell me how then the lord will
forgive a heart that does not know its own
language? tell me how then I can be delivered when
I cannot even parse my temptations from the gentle
whisper? my sins from a rich man’s translation?
Changeling Child
I remember swearing to myself: I will never grow up
but like all Lost Boys, I had to break that promise
in order to become a child
My broken pieces tethered by a prayer: I want to be a person
but like all Hang Men, I had to trace myself out limb by limb
in order to flood fill the lines
Was it by force of will or just the inevitability of time?
Who was that not-person that drew me? No matter,
they are irretrievable now
From the vantage point of my personhood, losing myself begins to hold
a seductive power: to drape myself in strangeness, decontextualized,
forever out of place
Skittering over streets and buildings, unattached to any landmarks
of place or person, compelled now to continually shed that certain
grotesqueness in familiarity
How were my unlined days so gloriously detached? I was born of my home
resolutely, vacant of perspective: I should have been reduced to eyes staring
out of my mother’s womb
Yet I was a changeling child with foreign eyes floating above the page and
now my new inflated currency of understanding somehow blinds me to the
self that exists beyond context
I remember swearing to myself: I will never grow up
but like all Lost Boys, I had to break that promise
in order to become a child
My broken pieces tethered by a prayer: I want to be a person
but like all Hang Men, I had to trace myself out limb by limb
in order to flood fill the lines
Was it by force of will or just the inevitability of time?
Who was that not-person that drew me? No matter,
they are irretrievable now
From the vantage point of my personhood, losing myself begins to hold
a seductive power: to drape myself in strangeness, decontextualized,
forever out of place
Skittering over streets and buildings, unattached to any landmarks
of place or person, compelled now to continually shed that certain
grotesqueness in familiarity
How were my unlined days so gloriously detached? I was born of my home
resolutely, vacant of perspective: I should have been reduced to eyes staring
out of my mother’s womb
Yet I was a changeling child with foreign eyes floating above the page and
now my new inflated currency of understanding somehow blinds me to the
self that exists beyond context