Dear God, 

Mama says, 

your heart is the sun, 

and each beat, 

beats heat on our fat lips. 

She says, “stand strong before the sun—”

the sun who warms our sons—

the sun, you’ve kindly lent us. 

Mama says, 

that the wind is the breath 

from thousands of your wingmen:

angels and angels gone rogue

(the wind is seldom kind). 

I say neither. 

I say that 

the wind is the wrath of our sky 

the sun: where worn-out fires flee.

I gorge on my imagined, 

like Mama, or you,

like zoo animals, like life sentences—

cages shredded by dreams. 

Dear God,

They tell me that you are beginnings and ends

and I just can’t stretch my mind far enough to see it. 

You’ve sewn tectonic plates into an Earth—

you break them just as easily. 

But beginnings go back further—

bestow false expectations—

stretch history books uncertain.

My mother was not my beginning, 

you are not the Earth’s.

Three-sided knives,

bullets like streamers, 

disease or old-age… 

it won’t be my end;

you are not the Earth’s.

Dear God, 

Until your hands write bible verses—

I think I should follow my own. 

I’ve strung words into a gravel path—

I’ve learned the ways of my world. 

My body is filled with breath, 

my skin, still playing hide and seek with time. 

I can’t shake the feeling, 

that this is my own doing. 

Dear God, 

I don’t come with questions, 

I don’t come with wishes. 

I don’t beg. 

I don’t confess my sins. 

My roots are planted, 

my mind made up. 

I don’t need 

miracles or signs

subtle clues or hidden keys.

I don’t need

your whispers

strung through wine. 

Dear God, 

I am used to the aching—

pain like an old bruise.

I’ve grown comfortable in my shaking

and my limbs shake alone. 

Even time, I accept. 

Even time and its taking.