My legs are shaking as I step
Onto a frozen lake
In skates that are not my own.

He grabs my hands
and whirls me in a wide circle
I scream and beg for him to stop.

He leaves me for a while
to wobble slowly
on my own.

Then he returns with a shopping cart
And dumps me in it
To push me across the lake

At an alarming rate.

With tears in my eyes
I beg him to stop.

I know I am being jettisoned
Towards my death.

I’ve always been afraid of them:
Stairs.
They have a tendency
To give way beneath me
And pitch me forward
Towards the floor
In the back of my mind at least,
They do this.
It is rare that
this moment
actually occurs
but the occasional occurrence
keeps the fear in the back of my mind
and in my dreams
I’m fall
ing,
fa
ll
ing,
fallen.

This Sunday
During the music
I saw a spider.

It crawled down the center aisle.

I thought to myself:
God made this spider
And it is going to give
Its soul
To Him
At the altar—

A silly thought.

This spider knows the LORD.
It was never separated from Him
As I have been.

Strangers stare
As I slip into
The cool water of
An above-ground pool
That has been set into a deck.

Rebecca and Carl
Have already
Cannonballed in
But that’s not

My style.

I step into the water

Slowly

Using the ladder
Gripping the handles
With a force that pleads
For them to
Save me
From this experience.

I am on exhibition.