Home >> Volume 1, Issue 03

Distances

Patricia Mickelberry

Here in my cave of maybes,
I have probably miscalculated
certain distances—the time it takes
to make a baby, perhaps, or the lengths
I’ll go to believe in something.

There’s a bitter stain in the bed
and a flat taste in my mouth that matches
the look of the light. It’s not my fault
that God came looking for me. I did not ask
for what I got—that lover or that death
or that terrible way of living that always
leads to heaven.

So let me be. Give me wine
and I will drink red for eternity.
I’ll fall into that rift and drift toward God
on my own swift shallow dreams.