The communion wafer fills your whole palm.
You color over hymns with black crayon
while I squint to make out a melody, then
crawl away from me on the blonde pews—
curls soft and whirling after last night’s bath,
constellation of cereal in your wake, shouting
your own invented song in perfect harmony
with yourself—and eventually, I surrender:
letting you lead me outside the glass doors,
into wild violets and uncut grass, where God is.
–
Emily Patterson is the author of So Much Tending Remains (Kelsay Books, 2022) and To Bend and Braid (2023). She studied English and Education at Ohio Wesleyan University and Ohio State University. Emily is a Pushcart Prize nominee with work published or forthcoming in Rust + Moth, SWWIM, Minerva Rising, and elsewhere.