Lapsed Priest
Today, as a gift,
I gave my mother a book
on angels.
That was a mistake.
We sat there
looking at the wings in the paintings.
I don’t know,
maybe she was reading
not just politely
waiting out the pain
of what she wouldn’t ask
me, knowing I had no answer.
Not sneeringly;
answers just stopped
interesting me. Soon enough
we’d moved on to the chicken Kiev,
then cigarettes over the sink.
I love to watch her smoke.
Glorious and ashamed.
She can look at me and know
this is one place
she has failed.
Still, alone, sixty-three,
a thick and greasy pink,
I remain,
thinking about Herod killing babies
and the like
as I say goodnight
and go out into the sizzling mix
of sleet and rain
where, again, I find
bits of toilet paper
draped across her roses.
I know the kid who did it.
Little shit.
Even his confessions
were performances of piety.
He thinks life is what you get away with.
Who am I to disabuse him?
I go home and fall asleep
in front of the TV,
wake up in air so blue and dry
I can taste the way
I’m bleeding from the nose.
Life has never been so easy.