To make a god’s eye totem, the young hippie
Sunday School teacher showed me how to glue
two popsicle sticks together and weave brightly
colored yarn over and under, under and over
the cross’s arms. So that my eye would see all
humans as children of god, regardless of how
they looked or what they believed. That waiting
for my turn or sharing my ice cream or kindly
saying thank you meant I had jesus in me. How
I wanted to feel him in me, wanted to love all
the children of the world. To be good. Better even.
In the nave, we sang love divine, all love excelling,
and I wanted to be excellent, to always treat others
the way I wanted to be treated. I must have wished
a hundred times when I took the host, crisp
as an ironed Sunday dress to my lips to be fault-free
so everyone would love me. I didn’t pray for things,
even when I really wanted a bicycle for Christmas –
or Snow! Instead, I prayed to love my sister. To be
forgiven for lying to my father. I knelt on the pew’s
brown Naugahyde bench and prayed to feel grace
burn in my heart. I never did. But I held on to it like
a totem until it was too decrepit even for nostalgia.
Who knows what landfill it landed in? I hope some
small mammal made a home of the sticks and string.