Sermons

Summer came with haste, and the endless cycle continued: cum, cry, pray, repeat. There’s not much good to say about that.



The season brought a blazing heat which draped over my small town. If I squinted hard enough out my window, I could see a haze shift like oil above the blue-green fields. They stretched for countless acres around my house. Jet black fences clad with years of wear lined the perimeter, keeping out cows and other sorts of barn animals. Each post was crowded with shoots of thistles my father would soon force me to hoe.



I hated the summer.



It was the loneliest season. My mother worried about this, but I honestly preferred being alone. It was useless to ask someone to hang out. It would be awkward, and I would want to leave. None of the friends I made in school ever invited me to do anything anyways. My luck with friends was most likely a punishment from God—a punishment I deserved.



So instead, I climbed wooden barbed fences behind my house and spent hours wandering dirt trails. I liked how the oak tree branches fanned like wings above me, providing shade from the sticky summer heat. Sometimes, I found rotting abandoned places amid the lush overgrowth: barns, hunting cabins, and churches that stunk of decaying wood and manure. If I felt brave enough, I stepped inside to peek at the mold-covered remnants.



Rummaging through these spaces provided me with a sense of hope, a swelling in my chest. I can't explain why I felt like this, not exactly.



It might be that, even in wreckage, these places still stood. One might call it wishful thinking.

# How glorious life is when I can be myself and be loved for it... how glorious life is when *I am* in love.


But I knew it was too good to be real. God created love only so he could take it away. For without it, we come a step closer to understanding damnation.  It's is a shackle - a punishment God dangles like bait from a string. Look! He says. Look at what I have created and taste it. I made the mistake of clamping down upon it, only for my mouth to be ripped open by the hook hiding underneath. **Now, like a fish, I thrash in the wake of my stupidity for ever believing God would allow me to love.**

In Kentucky, he faces the rage of God.



He memorizes Hebrews.

he prays on raw knees



But Nothing happens



outside lie blue turned fields alive with wind and grazing cattle.

Darker woods beyond harbor streams of baptismal water and rags of moss.

the cicada's dull drone seep through his bedroom walls



And each night,

before the navy dark swallows him,

he's shaken with violent sobs.



No one knows why

No one wants to watch a boy cry



He does not care to see again the church in the predawn dark.

The black fence stumps.

The dead deer hung from the basketball hoop.



He wanders down south as far as Newry.

A solitary migrant upon the pastoral and rolling landscape.

then came days of smoke, days of forgetting.

Days of searching for something he couldn't name



Letters come from Kentucky.

you have forgotten the hebrews they say

You are changing

You are not the boy we know



You don't understand he explains

in a language they don't understand



The more you ask

the farther I run

# **F\*\*\*\*t**



My brother and I born twins of the same



Animalism



a rebellion by breathing by being

heard our voices invented

your worst nightmare dad

and you wanted to



wake up



you took your hands off the  steering wheel

your fingers hacking machetes

your voice a gun whose bullets were whispers

because it's secretes that

murder and dad you



killed us



I didn't know a quivering word could

peer into the future

and ruin two boys

who will try and fix themselves forever

like perennial flowers during summer dusk

Four yellowed brass chandeliers curl

Above stiff dusted pews

and the organ halts it's hollow howl



Behind the pulpit he

adjusts his scratchy wool suit lifts

his hands, the church is

so dark in the choir closet

where i'm kneeling it’s a clover green ocean



i've done this so many times,

hidden myself inside regalia



flames the color of

Revelations transform each silk robe

and warp the floorboards by my feet

it's getting so hot my

flesh bubbles, i'm

not screaming,

the congregation, with open hymns don't notice

they drone like wood bees



i'm ablaze with God's light

I tell myself

this pain is my price



buck up son



it's my fault the closet's on fire

anyways and praying only makes suffering more

real so

I do the only thing I can do



which is nothing at all

All this town knows is itself,



and September mornings are forever

covered in steel blue frost.



i'm working a shovel beside the tenet's son.

slants of sunrise slip past his elbow

and soak my jacket in warmth.



as if I'm the earth and he

my eclipsing moon.



We lance dry roots wrapped

taught around fence stumps

his lean body reacts with each

elegant slaughter



i'm starring



within every bead of sweat

dribbling under his thick brow

atop his knuckles

between his thighs

I hope to find my reflection



the grazing field holds

a hushed whisper

broken by grass crunched beneath a boot



I didn't know

to hope is to peer in

the darkness of a boy

and find a mirror

i'm only 12 but you're



screaming from the boat



jump



the branch in my palm is



wet rocks in between my



toes I can't



leap dad



I haven't been brave



since I took of fmy



skin and danced without



knowing it was dangerous to



peal back scabs



jump boy



don't be scared of cliffs



the climb is always longer than the



fall into madness



but I was in the air for years after



jumping



is an attempt to



soar and dad



I wanted to fly away

He is an unstoppable force, hurtling towards a question.



He doesn't know



the answer.



But,



he knows the pain of changing,



is a price for the body's direction.

Last winter my
dog died in a hole she
dug under the porch.

when she crawled
through the snow
And into the soffit
I crawled in after
on hands and knees
cold wet dirt slid
between my fingers

And I watched her
shake and then grow limp
but
I never could figure out
why she choose to die
underground