If You Can Do This, You Can Do This

Vestments do not make a priest. Pry

the shock from your life and pray.

Sashay from pique to answer if answers be.

To a sulking child, gentle listener, 

a fact of not quite yet. How to let go

decades of present tense? The fence between

reason for being and the shift to a shed,

housing neatly hanging tools, arranged

by the man who robbed my joy, quashed my story.

My innocent tale made threadbare. I spoke

on staves. The notes enslaved. There was no light 

above below. I tried to fast. I starved. 

I thought I was good. I spoke my history.