Baby Teeth

I pulled the prayers from my raw gums like baby teeth. With the
          blood spat into my palm, there lay the tools with which I
          chewed up everything I ever put into my mouth. And yet even
          then I had felt the hands working my jaw for me.

Every day I tongue the empty space before meals and again at
          bedtime. There’s this moment when I feel like I should be
          saying something, but the void leaves my tongue aimless in the
          newfound space. I’ve grown accustomed to it.

I wasn’t so fond of it when they wiggled in my mouth when I talked
          or ate, acting like a broken saloon door for my roving tongue. I
          didn’t like to brag about it with my friends. It didn’t quite feel
          like a rite of passage as it did a loose Band-Aid.

They dangled on those last few roots that desperately clung on to that
          childlike innocence, which looked like Awana badges, Sunday
          school, father reading to me bedtime stories of David, the
          girlfriends in church that were always repentant after we
          touched;

I began to believe I could sew it back in if I only believed hard
          enough. It was in those last few efforts that I was at my lowest,
          when my gums started to become infected as bacteria got
          beneath the bone and festered in the flesh. I grew sorer and
          sorer.

At some point I ripped every last one of them out. The therapist had
          cancelled my last three appointments. The bible study couldn’t
          progress since it refused to answer my first three questions. I
          stopped believing an artist had to first and foremost be
          miserable.

I still keep them in a little plastic treasure chest in a cardboard box in
          the garage, along with my plastic baseball trophies and other
          sentiments unworthy of the bedroom shelves. I recycled all the
          extra bibles I previously felt guilty enough to never say no to.

Sometimes a meal looks so good I feel the need to thank someone for
          it. Sometimes I wake up so happy I need to give someone credit.
          Sometimes that’s not the case. I’m happy I don’t have the voices
          telling me through my own teeth how sinful I am.

I’m also happy they’re not telling you how sinful you are.

I tongue the space before meals and before I drift to sleep. I feel
          something growing there. My parents are looking into an
          operation that will put the teeth back in. I still fear one day I’ll
          be the one to grab the sewing kit.

I don’t fear cavities anymore. I think they took them all with them. I
          brush my teeth now and believe in modern medicine, and
          climate change. Needless to say, I didn’t put them under my
          pillow that night.

I love the way you
say my Christian name
without the faith

No one dies today
Only our doubts
No one lives today
Only our souls
Speak if you can
Believe what you must
I will pray upon my heart
and not ancient scrolls

Like a Roman soldier
Who knows the truth
Apart from his people
And those who follow
To choose to walk alone
To know the faith of a bird
It is the life of my heart
Living with joy and sorrow

The is no judgment
For we are the miracle
The mistakes of a stranger
Are the same as mine
It is what I know
The question is how
The spirit is risen in me
Yet still I remain blind

I would cry like a baby
If my child would suffer
I would know then why I live
But why must I leave them
They will grow in time
And I will shrink to nothing
Is it then that a dying man asks
For a new father to save him?

It brought peace; love.
Understanding of the world around me.
Hope.
Guidance.
It was a fence so I never had to worry
if I was safe or making the right choice.
I never had to think for myself;
someone did that for me 2,000 years ago.
But just as there is no day without night,
good is a fragile woman
who is always accompanied by her life-partner
evil.

It also brought judgement on others
and judgement on myself.
Superiority.
Lack of empathy from anyone who thought or
felt different from me.
It hid the work ethic organically
installed in my bones
to search for answers;
factual truths.
It kept my philosophical mind on lock-down.
Never to create;
always to accept.

I look back now
half missing my naive self,
half feeling sorry for her.
Now it simply does not live with me.
I can’t prove it’s real,
I can’t prove it isn’t.
So I live in ‘I don’t know’
and yet I’ve never felt more free.

And I think I should say
I did not find God, today.
I'm being told that my mind
isn't considered right and that
I will always lose the fight
that is life.

I think I should melt away
with the tangerine dusk;
float away with the
copper-colored dust.
And I shouldn't be mourned
or become a chore to the
people I should have warned:
I am a Godless void, ruined by
my own mindless self-indulgence.

For what it's worth,
it no longer hurts or can
be mistaken for
something bigger
for our Lord.

Maybe I should find a
Texas hole to melt inside;
a place to rest my burden,
fall apart and die.

i know i said i'm agnostic.
i've said that for the past 6 years...
but i feel that i've lost it
and today i need a listening ear.
i don't know where i'm going,
and where i've gone doesn't matter.
i rise but then i fall knowing
i'll just end up shattered.
i worry that what i have isn't sufficient.
while others keep a steady pace forward,
i freeze, lose sight of my ambitions,
and i'm locked in a dark corner.
i study, i practice, i study, i practice,
i forget how to relax,
i wish i could fade to blackness,

but i remember to stand tall.
if i stand with good posture,
chin high, i might not fall.
in this world i have to conjure
some hope from somewhere.

i know i said i'm agnostic,
but this is a letter to You.
i am trying to find a place in this world
that i can call mine.
please, grant me the strength to
discover it.