Pool

He is playing at the pool, this nine or ten year old boy with glowing white skin from indoors and a baseball cap he refuses to remove and wears like a crown of manhood. He is comfortable playing alone until he notices her, a girl about his age in a brown bathing suit the color of her hair. She swims up to him to engage him in play, splashing her greeting.

Everything she does he tries to do better, and they begin playing side by side. She races past him. He swims faster. They shoot water guns and bat a ball back and forth with their hands. He always lets her go first. He is straddling competition and chivalry, and he doesn’t understand why, but he doesn’t want her to go away. She is a tomboy, but there is softness to her moves. “I’m coming to the pool tomorrow,” he tells her before he leaves with his mother. She nods and laughs.

And I sit under a pool umbrella and watch because the girl is my nine year old daughter. My moleskine journal is afraid to accept my fountain pen memories of this moment. The young Romeo’s naive and innocent interest is both beautiful and frightening.

old moleskine
empty, off-white pages
damp with the pool’s tears

Lies

He took me to dinner
for steaks
and wined me
and wooed me
and told me these things.

that I was always
beautiful.

that if people didn't agree with me,
they were wrong.

that life
should be fair.

that I should believe
what people say about me.

that the only authority I should honor
is the authority with whom I agree.

that my beliefs are based
on my feelings.

that it is easier to avoid problems
than to fix them.

that love
is a feeling.

that my parents were
always right.

that I was always
ugly.

that I shouldn't have to wait
for what I want.

that I'm better
than everyone else.

that love is
a chemical.

that all my problems
are caused by my sin.

that I'm worse
than everyone else.

that I must get approval
or else I am worthless.

that my parents were
always wrong.

that none of my problems
were caused by my sin.

that people are
basically good.

and, pushing himself from the table,

that there is
no devil.

Coffee Boy at Starbucks

The center of attention....
every sip of his coffee deliberate,
every witty dialogue rehearsed
when he chose the t-shirt that morning,
the one that fit him to the skin with no room for mistakes.
"I am an open book."

But now he watches the new one...
move through his friends with casual, impromptu charm,
with no anxiety,
flicking a cigarette butt,
trying them on one
by one for size.

The Attack

And the sharp pains
knifing my chest
were from You,
Lion of Judah
as Your teeth gripped
deep into the meat of my heart that
You shook relentlessly,
splattering the sin from Your prey
across my burning eyes
as I adoringly stroked Your mane.

presumption

"If God is listening..."
she murdered the cigarette in the ashtray...
"then perhaps he'd like to explain..."
lipstick mark on the tip...
"...why something so good came to such a screeching halt."

And I didn't know what to say.

A tree strong enough to sit in is strong enough
to shake.
But I wish I could be stirred instead.


"Perhaps, he'd like to step forward and be held accountable..."


and I wanted--
with empathy for her
and malice toward none--
ok, malice toward her--
to defend Him,
my nonAmerican
nonrepublican
sexless God
of many colors

and He laughed

as I played with my straw paper.