On Christmas Eve I walk arm and arm with mom to Church because that’s a daughter’s duty. Skidding a little bit on the ice, I think about about all the times I was warned away. Like when I was fifteen at my Confirmation retreat and the hot wax from my candle scared my arm. I was too afraid to put the candle down and draw attention to myself. When we get inside the Church I sit in the pew beside her, stare up at the white Jesus, and think about how he had to be gay. Because he rolled through the villages with his pack of twelve men but mostly because of the way Judas sobbed for him when he was gone. I was only comfortable in the Church on Ash Wednesday. That was the day we were all invited to wear our sin with pride that we would be walking towards the Lord’s light. Still, even then, the old white priest would narrow his eyes at me, like he could smell it on me, before rubbing the ashes onto my forehead with two strokes. I loved that the cross washes off but the feeling doesn’t. I’m not scared of obviously Gay Jesus, or God, because the stories they tell me aren’t true. They scare me the way the first horror movie you watched against your parents’ wishes always will, even though the special effects were terrible and your brother sat beside you with a bowl of popcorn. There’s no Freddy or Jason. There’s no God like this. The room fills with ghosts from my small town past. There’s the history teacher who used to put the bustier girls in the front of the class. I was in the back of his class. And the skinny girl who ran the two-mile on the track team who I loved. I pretend not to see her wave. And the heavier woman with seven kids who volunteered at the Bible school and used to give us Jesus homework. She once told my mom I was the best student because I had a memory for Verse. I once asked her how I would know if I met an angel or a saint, because I was too embarrassed to ask about myself. I thought it must be holy to love beyond bodies. The priest tells us to rise, the congregation unzips their coats, the pews creak as they are freed from our weight, and I rise too.

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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