The Confession of St. Jim-Ralph

O UR P ATRON OF F ALLING S HORT , W HO B ECAME A P RAYER I used to sneak into the movies without paying. I watched the stories but I failed to see the dark. I went to college and drank everything they gave me, and I never paid for any of that water on which I drifted as if by grace until after the drownings, when in the diamond light of seven-something A.M., as the spring was tearing me up in Cartajena, only praying on my knees before the magnifying ark of the Seventh St. Hotel could possibly save me, until falling on my face before the daughter of money while the world poured from the till brought the moment’s length against the moment’s height, and paying was what I was earning and eating and wearing.