There was a church under the church under the stones under my granddaddy’s pew there was a dark mouth a narrow stairwell a hungry maw.
The was a church situated exactly on top of the church I could look up during the prayer and see it hovering a chicken-wire parade float outfitted with Angel wings.
There was a church inside the church inside the hearts of the congregation the baptized heads the earnest-in- prayer claspings of hands I wriggled inside this church little girl in a hair shirt.
Inside the church inside the smell of old hymnals dank carpet dollar bills inside the soul of the community inside my breaking heart there is nothing so terrible as expecting an inquisitive budding intellectual hooked on Star Trek to have blind faith.
And so I peeled myself off of the church off the walls of the church the knotty pine the feeling of desperation the yearning toward goodness the guilt guilt guilt for my badness I left the ceiling-sweeping Xmas tree the God Rest Ye the How Great Thou Art but–
There is a church inside me superimposed on the bones of me I am mineral I am air I am church the building the nostalgia of the thing the women the ham the potato salad and brother Charlie’s cherry tobacco chaw plastered to the wasp’s sting on my five-year-old cheek.
