Dear God of Music Boxes.
I can’t pray in song like you do.
I can’t pray to you.
Afraid to say the wrong things.
Afraid you actually exist.
I will say the only words I know.
How terrible.

Turns out you do exist.
Turns out you were trying to reach me this whole time.
But my ears didn’t know how to hear in blue,
By the time they could
your combsprings were rusted,
the winding key lost,
the gears ground to a polish.

Now I can only run my fingers along the pricks
of the drum to decipher
what you were trying to say,
what your voice would have sounded like.

I didn’t believe you existed.
Now that you do,
you don’t believe I exist.
We’re apostates exchanging cassocks.
Angels with crossies.
Dead stars with leftover shine.

My fingertips are blistered,
but I’ve figured out the tune.
It’s “Michelle” by The Beatles.
Of course it is. Why
would it be anything else?

We have a crisis of tangibility.
Faith is too concrete.
We hate concrete.
We prefer soft
dissolvable things that do not leave
funerals in our mouths.

Now my fingers are bleeding.
I know the song,
it resonates in my teeth.
I hear it 32 times.
“I love you, I love you, I love you”

Amen.

 

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