Dear Deity,
I keep having dreams of stepping
on sidewalk cracks but you’re not my mother.
Ideally you would have a form,
something contained
designed to hold but instead you are made
of superstition. Here, outside of the high gates, we invoke
your name and then unspeak it. Mocking lovers who don’t throw salt
over their shoulders
then guiding their hands through the motion.
You live in the blue all the porch ceilings are painted
to ward off ghosts or wasps depending on who’s telling
the story. Ideally, a form: holding tight to a blush mirror
cat hair black on your good red shirt.
I can’t breathe by graveyards because of you.
Don’t you write back, not until after Friday. Sincerely,
sincerely, I mean it.