Caught

  My thighs pin the glistening, gold bangles of my left hand as though my limb is some wiley escape artist writhing for an adrenaline fix. Rightfully so. My flesh does everything in its power not to reach across the boldly colored tile table and intertwine fingers, palms and pheromones. I imagine my pride fizzing and dissolving, breaking up and foaming like one of those pebbly, round-particle pockets of dishwashing fluid that smell like Evergreen and Everest. If I relent will I be washed clean? Will my poisons and passions and parading be wrung out of me and suffocated as I dry on high heat? Will I shoot up like a Michigan pine kissing the banks of an autumn brushed morning? Will I move like a miracle mountain that sprouted wings due to your faith like a mustard seed?

 My rigid muscles do right to deny you. I will insist that I do not need your help even though every starving, wandering strand of me craves the fine blonde hairs atop your arm.

   Your words taste like the glistening granules of an early morning Christmas cookie. 

   I feel my posture shifting. 

   You reference Donne and I appreciate your efforts to understand me. I consider God sending you as an agent to come collect and dismantle me, to scoop me up like flecks of dust made known by your uncharted light. You kneel to my level and I am a child whose hope I do not have the strength to conceal. I writhe uncomfortably while studying the silver slices of your irises. You illuminate me.

   Your fingers slowly and gently slip into mine.

    "Little Flower. 

     Since when 

     Did the hope of

     God 

     Put you to 

     Shame?"