Sanctuary
Blue-skinned with tattoos over
packed muscles twisting under
tee sweat-stained black as
3 a.m., shouting “Pastor! Pastor! Pastor!”
he crashes into the church
just as the sermon’s ending.
He’s one of ours. A fragile giant, and now
he’s using again.
Thirsty so thirsty.
Tip water to my mouth,
I can’t reach the cup and
my bones are fire.
The minister,
black-robed, stretches arms to him,
places fingers strong as light on the
shaved and scarred head he bows over
her lectern, murmurs words
like cool water. She is tall, slender,
her hair the color of morning. People
rise, come forward from pews, surround the
not-yet-pieta.
They circle me the wolves the lions to tear to devour.
No, child, the minister says. These are the faces of love.
How the story turns back again and again
asking to be rewritten.
*
Ann Boaden lives and writes in MidAmerica, where she received master’s and doctoral degrees in English from The University of Chicago and taught literature and writing at her undergraduate school, Augustana (Illinois). Her work appears/is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Big Muddy, Blue Unicorn, From SAC, Ginosko, litbreak, Penwood Review, Persimmon Tree, Sediments, South Dakota Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Windhover, among many other journals.
