Priest's Kid
By Catherine Hervey
If they aren’t family, you don’t know
the spit at the corner of the mouth
as they say words they’d tell you not to use
the sound of doors slamming as they leave you
the second trip to rehab (or the fourth).
You just know them showing you
how God, this white rock, goes first
into the plastic cup that is your life so friends,
school, sports, all else (this sand)
can fill the empty space and everything will fit
and how it doesn’t work the other way.
I like them best like this
in jeans, crucifix, collar
at the altar with the children
in a summer camp chapel with no walls
or on the beach, like for my sister’s wedding.
Alleluia we say when Lent is over.
A bright cloth butterfly beneath the Alleluia
on my father’s stole.
________
Next up Psalm for My Earthly Soul
Photo by Oliver Paaske on Unsplash
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The Waking is an online literary magazine and a part of the Ruminate creative community that houses high-quality literary writing about what it’s like to be human. We are interested in short-form prose and image-text hybrid work. This art can be beautiful, it can be strange, we just ask that it feels true.
Erin Kramer
February 26, 2020
This feels so real to me, and I love the imagery. You can almost feel the pressure there contrasted with the lightness of the stole.