Sometime between corn dogs and bunk-bed conversation
I found you in a dark cafeteria, my secret prison
Knelt on cold linoleum
Mid-July, at CLI –
“The Christian Leadership Institute” for high schoolers
I genuflected awkwardly, discreetly
As guitar strummed to set the mood
I waited in the back row of plastic chairs
To feel you like the girl in the blue
Whose soft weeps carried like a hallelujah
While a breeze from a side door, warm wind
Came like an answer to her midnight penance
And I waited for Miss Tina, silvery, wrinkled, motherly
“You're next”
To meet the man on the porch outside
And I'm sorry that I am mean to my brothers
And I'm sorry that I am selfish
And I'm sorry
Sorry
“Your sins are forgiven,” said the man in white.
And maybe the weight was too light to feel lifted at fourteen
Not as heavy as the girl in the blue
When I shuffled back to kneel
And waited
For a revelation I thought I wasn't lost enough to find
When words I didn't know I needed
Rested in my heart
As hands rested
On my skeletal shoulders, neglected from dissatisfaction
Denied in a quest for perfection
“You are so loved”
The fourteen-year-old self
Neither good enough for herself nor broken enough for church camp
Folded into the floor like a falling blanket
As tears fell to guitar strums
And assurance of worth