Glued to the leather upholstery

        Like the bubblegum under her pew, her sticky palms

Shoved under dirty knees to hide their trembling; the cosmos are slipping through her fingers

        Like so many grains of sand.

Her mother’s eyes are melting

And they both pretend not to notice

As her mother lights candles in a room that is not hers

        And prays for a daughter she already has

She weeps through interwoven hands

Jagged breaths for a god she has tried all her life to believe in

Tears in her eyes for the souls of girls who

        Think other girls are beautiful

She stares at the flaking paint on the wall opposite her 

        For it is a lifeline

Blue flecks crinkle, crash against the trim, cacophony hidden in the fallen dust as 

        Time slows to a standstill

Her silhouette, hopefully, dances in some blood red field

        Where stalks of wheat can be bent

        And where incense does not lull her to sleep

        And where her mother’s words

        Are not stamped out of steel, like the nickels in

        So many alms boxes