Lent
On Saturdays I drank pilfered liquor, kissed boys in backseats, in basements where the parents were always out of town. Spent Sundays penitent at mass. The slender marble aisle. The cracked leather kneeler. The congregation sitting and standing, kneeling and sitting in a stuttering unison as I replayed the rhythm of hand on—, tongue on—, my prayer-bent body arched with aimless lust. I knew. I had learned in church: to be bodied was to be sinful. I gave up milk, gave up spoons, shaved the thumbnail down to meet its fleshy bed. Gave up chicken and carved each night the pan-fried meat from thigh-bone, fork-stabbed the knobby joints. Wished myself up out of my limbs and aches. Watched my hipbones rising like the crescent moon. But if this was wrong, why had they made Christ’s body so beautiful? He hung there, an object lesson in desire and its aftermath. I listened. Christ said, put your hand here.