Evening Prayer

1. Two Gods: the one in the closet and the one from school days and both are not mine. I opened the door on God at dusk and closed him the rest of the day. He perched on the ledge above my father's shirts and wool suits, a mandir in every Hindu house, ours smelling of starch, surrounded by ties and old suitcases. I was the ghost at school, sat on the pew and watched as other girls held God under their tongues. My lips remember the prayer my parents taught me those evenings with their bedroom closet open—Ganesh carved in metal, Krishna blue in a frame. I don't remember the translation, never sure I really knew it. I got mixed up sometimes, said a section of the "Our Father" in the middle of the arti, ending in Amen when I meant Krishna, Krishna,