My hips don’t feel so heavy these days.

They’ve gotten used to carrying excuses why

I don’t believe in God.

I just talk to him like I do:

hey, where are you?

I’ve been scared lately

it’s still awful dark down here with the lights on

and my eyelashes are making shadows

that look like monsters in the closet

where are you?

My windpipe feels like it echoes these days,

Lately, I’ve been talking more to myself

than familiar faces. My journal has become

an answering machine for the thoughts I pass on the street

and God is just one of them that’s too long of a message

to leave before the beep:

hey,

I thought I saw you today

in the carpet of my sister’s apartment

the sun was enfolding itself around you

right before you started to make love to the dust particles,

I tried to find something to hold you in

I missed it

where are you?

what do you look like?

I thought I saw you today

in the soft spot on my niece’s head

you didn’t look like a man and I didn’t see a woman

I just saw divinity so I pressed my ear to her forehead

and listened

But my hands are bonier these days,

dried like papyrus, calloused from gripping

onto theories like heaven isn’t a place—it’s a feeling.

I still think children are molded from mud.

They age like sun rays and dry like clay.

God, it’s not that I don’t believe

I feel hardened these days

we are taught too young here

how to point two fingers and cock our thumb

we are worth the sum of our pockets and our verses

divided by the distance between what’s crucial and commercial

half of us are broke

the other half is breaking

tell me it’s not my fault

split my glazed plaster

into a thousand pieces of appreciation

tell me that you are an artist

you have to be

remind me life is suffering

existence is coincidence

and I am just a witness of half of it

tell me that when we met

it was love at first sight

and that you have a crush on me

Yes, that’s right; God has a crush on me.

That’s why he is too embarrassed to talk,

he’s afraid he might say the wrong thing.

Well I’m listening,

and I’m waiting.

Nobody is an atheist in a foxhole.

This isn’t Hell—this isn’t even close—

It’s hard these days to keep praying

to someone who’s got you on hold

when all I want is something to hold on to.

I’m just supposed to know that you’re there

So I’ll keep eavesdropping on

season uprisings where I think you’re hiding,

look for you in the smell of acoustic cedar and cigarettes,