Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Manifestation, 2016 (Artist Website)
Photograph
Let’s not talk of Oblivion
or who might be at that party.
There were whole groups of people
whose sole jobs were to pray
for the King’s absolution. Day in
and out with rosaries around the wrists.
And what of their own sins? Who prayed
for them when they kicked the dog,
or overwatered the Hydrangeas?
Who prays for me, now that I’ve
stopped talking to God? Surely not
my atheist lover or the man who butchers
my meats and knows there is no
bleeding sheep nailed to my front door.
I have come to accept that we don’t
know all things, or was it that
we don’t all know things. The distinction
seemed important at the time.
As long as I wasn’t the only one
in the dark, then I could live there happily
making out shapes by squinting,
hollering at every opossum loitering
on the fence posts. It’s that there might
be those out there who are further along,
that I can’t seem to stand. Envious of the noises
they make, the small lifeguard whistles
they were given at birth by some ghost
hiding behind the curtain during the baptism.
Of course it is not their fault that we should live
this life cloistered, with little help from the stars.
That we can’t conceive of the tablecloth being ripped
away without the disturbance of a single glass.
Or that we might misunderstand the lullaby
for an end, when really it is a door.