Disgraceland

Before my first communion, I clung to doubt as Satan spider-like stalked the orb of dark surrounding Eden for a wormhole into paradise. God had formed me from gel in my mother’s womb, injected by my dad’s smart shoot. They swapped sighs until I came, smaller than a bite of burger. Quietly, I grew till my lungs were done then the Lord sailed a soul like a lit arrow to inhabit me. Maybe that piercing made me howl at birth, or the masked creatures whose scalpel cut a lightning bolt to free me. I was hoisted by the heels and swatted, fed and hauled around. Time-lapse photos show my fingers grow past crayon outlines, my feet come to fill spike heels. Eventually, I lurched out to kiss the wrong mouths, get stewed, and sulk around. Christ always stood to one side with a glass of water. I swatted the sap away. When my thirst got great enough to ask, a clear stream welled up inside, some jade wave buoyed me forward, and I found myself upright in the instant, with a garden inside my own ribs aflourish. There, the arbor leafs. The vines push out plump grapes. You are loved, someone said. Take that and eat it.