Mrs. God

God and Mrs. God in watercolor blue skirt desolate. — David Schubert I am not a woman, I am a man. Made in His image. I keep the house, a gray Cape Cod, and broom it well. I wear a skirt to be comfortable. I build the fire. When my husband comes home I don’t pester Him with questions. He knows where to find His slippers and His pipe. Out our kitchen back door I see the prophets freight-hopping the long bad Western in ancient English that no one need read to know. Everyone speaks his part: the women keep their heads down while the men are losing theirs. Children? How often I’ve prayed for a child, which means slipping meaning looks to my husband as we rock together on the porch of an evening, drinking lemonade and playing Scrabble. If He lets me win it’s a sign. I haven’t won yet. But the neighbor children come and go and take the pies cooling on the windowsill without thanks. Sometimes terrible things happen to them — some man spills the blood cradled so carefully in every hand. I accept no blame. The pies were there to leave alone, or not. God says nothing but taps out His pipe, stands, with a hand to ease His aching back. Time for bed. Our bed is a rolling ocean that I tread alone just a head bobbing above the ash-colored waves while the moon waits for me and everything to drown, to know again the peace the moon knows, the silence interrupted by astronauts, little green men, the spectacle a mother can’t help but make of  herself. God comes to bed and I clutch a spar, a barrel, an oar, and ride out the night with it. When He fucks me still He doesn’t speak, for speech is creation but I rock with him, I roll inside what cannot be comprehended, in force. I forget that I’m a man, I forget the wild sea, I let slip my grasp and the colors I have that cover me. Once I dreamed of the morning: we left the house together in identical sober suits, we stood in the street and beheld the sad little town, wreathed in black crepe for its children. As though the morning could show me His face. He coughed. And when I awoke in our ordinary bed, streaked by sun through leaded windows, I held my baby to my breast and watched the roof  beam and whispered to her,It’s all right, we are safe only and always from our dreams.