Snotty-nosed on Santa’s lap, we dripped
our ecstasy: ravishing light, rainbow
butterflies, dodgeballs zipping
through the Church of Christ gym.
My dear, you have chosen
martyrdom, like your mother
before you – her mother, too.
My mother
Now eats strawberry salad on a bed
of spinach as she whispers prayers
for my rehabilitating brother as he pets two dogs
that shake as my sister shouts,
Forgiveness for a better tomorrow!
and, The world is my fingertip!
Friend, the moment you die
and are reborn with a new last name,
the moment your body is torn
like string cheese, the moment you dab vomit
from your child’s sheets, you will ask,
Is life for me? And I will send you a letter
with this poem inside it and a picture
of two children on Santa’s lap, his beard
a temple, their smiles a hallelujah.