Church

I was raised in a black glass church
Where they told you it was see through
That they never hid anything for it was made of glass
But even if it is glass
You cannot peer through black
It's truth was feeble and thin 
The glass broke into brittle iotas of the dark 
With one fingertip pressed, and no blood spilled
Only the blacken blood of the black glass church 
Then I went to the church that was built out of sand 
I thought this one would be better
Since it was formed like a castle 
With a red flag even posed on the top
But who would have known
That it was only for a show?
Until the invertebrate blue waves
Came hurtling in across the church of sand
And the church became only a home for the tide once again
I was about to give up when I found a rock to sit upon
And it happened to be a church carved out of stone
That didn't lie about its transparency
And wasn't quite pretty enough to be for show
So the church made of rock let me lean upon it
It was a cornerstone for the weary and insecure 
A defense for the weak
An anchor for the drifting souls
And full of golden ore for the poor
The black glass church and church of sand
Each owned their separate faults
But what neither had except the church of stone 
Was the indispensable ability to stand. 



-anna sluder 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Time present time

I stand on my toes, on a box, on top of a wheeled chair to reach the clock high above me, so that I can cut the whiskers of it off with a pair of gardening scissors. But I hear a knock at the door and it is present standing in the way holding a fish, she hands it to me, so I ask her what to do with it, she tells me she knows that everything the birds say really matters to me that she knows that I count and store every breath that the trees release, in an empty peanut butter jar under my bed, but that I could not remember my first cold water, there was no recollection of my first bright moon. She tells me to hold the fish and decide what it means to me in terms of love, so that I will remember when I leave this room, and when I go to sleep, that I once loved something new, and small, and grey, and something that had scales and looked nothing like me, and I didn’t know where it came from or where it would go from there, but that that di
Read more

Green

I stand in the door wanting nothing, but to be a part of the little house we built of medium-rare earth and broken eggshells and wriggly worms, the bedroom walls are green and there is a single thought tactfully pinned to its center. I remember that everything is quieter in green, and to find solace in the silent ecstasy of the earth’s preeminent color, to excavate and toss away all the colors until we reach the obvious, that green is the walls, and green is earth, and earth reclaims buildings slowly over time with moss then ivy, then as the buildings dilapidate and become their own graves in gardens of decay, it swallows them whole, like swamps and quicksand I thought would play a much larger role in my girlhood battles than they did. I want to crawl inside of the little house we built and play in the dirt with the worms, I want to be reclaimed by terra cotta clay and tunnels made by ants, and if I need to, I’ll send a note to the green,
Read more

The Only Future I See

I am afraid to make today my home, I am afraid to buy pillows in the comfort of this moment, so I try to imagine the future, I like to think that it is a road lined with flowers in the colors of my youth, but there are no flowers, I don’t even think that if there is a road, it is lined with commas. When I dare my mind to try to imagine the future, I only see myself, no bills, no house, no job, no person, no plan, just myself standing in a field of baby green ampersands, cutting my hair and then holding a small bird, and the bird doesn’t sing for me,  as I promised I would never ask it to, it just stays alive beside me. So most days we break apart plums with our fingers like stories, and we make each day, each plum our home, and we are perfect and we are whole in this interval of quiet, where the sun is the only one who gets to see. -anna sluder
Read more