GOD OF COMPASSION, IN MERCY BEFRIEND US


Womanhood was a thought inside me, released
once the storm took apart her tiny door
and then what’s the use
of a small night prayer like this? I live
life post-storm—no matter, everything
is drawn with one sort of body
and then drawn again. Today offers
a moment, a small dab of lipstick
on a newly polished finger.
Someone erases a couple letters
and suddenly I am a man again
but I turn off the body like when it rains
and He has turned off the clouds,
like when the barren sky at midnight
wants to be something, but faces four gunshots:
nothing, nothing, followed by nothing, nothing.