I was in line at the pharmacy when the man behind me
mumbled a heavy burden under his breath. He said:
“Seek fame over God and you will not be followed,”
as if it were a warning, or a
convenient kind-of curse,
and right then,
he helped me write a poem
out of strange pieces.
We’re all holy when you hold us up to the light —
these fluorescent
hall(ucinogenic)elujahs.
I attempted to pay my debt.
The cashier caught my coin before it dropped.
The stranger and I slow-blinked,
preparing for the man behind the counter to call it.
He didn’t.
Instead, he read a receipt-scripture of a woman
who held bottles of alcohol close to her chest,
who was embarrassed by the weight of it all,
who clarified that she wanted to
“cleanse herself.”
Nothing is pure and it is a privilege to know that.
And it is a punishment to know that –
the trace of booze on the stranger behind me was
the most honest thing about that day,
how I did not know what to call it,
so I called it coincidence.
And how he did not know what to call it,
so he called it Christ.