St. Peter

‘Can dolphins eat earth fruit?’

I wonder as I look down at sea stars

at sands more numerous than the stars

we are made of the cosmos

and we are fashioned after God in the mud

and to dust we will all return

It is so early that the stars must be sleeping;

and I watch the coral blooming in the wilting light of a passing turtle’s eclipse.

I swim upward in the dawn

and think of the fires of the Wide Sargasso Sea,

Mother Earth,

Mother Ocean,

all the flutter and fury and fire that swims within my breast

I miss the weight of the sea every time I leave,

but I hate the heaviness of the gear as I’m climbing back up the boat;

the water clings to me with every heartbroken wave,

it whispers don’t let me go,

I need your warmth

It is feels like the first time I fell in love

like a soft wind that bends rivers

Come back to me, come back to me

and love me again

like you did right now

I think of St. Peter,

of the sun in his net:

He was average, so very average, but he prayed.

He was more than average;

his were hands washed in the salt of all the fish's tears;

chapped lips blue;

and with fisher’s hands, ground down to the blushing red of the cold waters,

which burst into pain when they warm again,

after leaving the ocean,

his fingernails had the striations of jagged rocks slowly worn by the tides of time,

like the waters wanted to wear them to sand,

to be the inheritance of shells and its daughters of pearl,

with the black bite of a shark in the middle of his thumb,

the mark of a working man after a fell tool has caught him as his mind wandered too far off shore,

to distant lands and ports he had never visited, but daydreamed of every day, every second.

His breath in winter,

came out like foam on a high tide which drifted off into the air with a cough like sea spray.

He was like all those who are average, but spend all day in long dialogue with God,

waiting for God to break their silent monologue in reply.

As he bent to take the net in his hand,

the blood would rush to his head,

as he bowed, and he would think on Him

and on the day he would come again.

Did he make the fish,

so that he and his brother had no choice, but to follow?

So that they could no longer use the excuse of work to forgo their obedience to God?

So that their purse would always be empty

and that they could no longer pursue worldly things,

thus releasing them from their prison of the Prince of this world?

To keep the enemies of God and his angels from stealing his pearl of great price?

‘Most assuredly,’ I thought. ‘If I think of such thing now, certainly, he must have thought them, too.’

I had thrown away a rosary of rubies;

It had belonged to my grandmother.

I threw it away after I had had a seizure in the street.

My neighbor had run over.

‘Thank goodness! Someone has seen me and will help me with these brain problems!’ I thought.

I had been hit many, many years ago a very many times by a man whom I could not bring to court;

because to do so;

I would have to file a police report.

I would have to report him to himself and his accomplices.

He had left me with frequent migraines and catatonic seizures which have left me unable to work.

Insurance would not cover the EEG because I was twenty-four unless I took him to court and won.

I thought, ‘Finally; I will at least be able to get on disability because someone has finally seen.

‘I will be able to move;

I could take him to court

and he will go to prison for what he did

to all of us.’

But my neighbor made a lewd comment,

dragged me off to his house,

and please understand what he did to me,

even if I don’t say it.

When it was over,

I was sitting in his kitchen,

his wife was washing the dishes and didn’t look at me.

I was staring at the magnets on their fridge.

It looked so normal.

I wondered if he was one of them

or just one of the guys who watched the videos.

I think it was twenty-seven crumpled dollars on the counter that his wife placed.

I know there was a seven in the number and it was such a disgusting amount of money.

Everything hurt and I was coming down from whatever was in that needle he had stuck in my arm after I had been dragged into their bedroom.

After the blows to the head,

my neighbor,

and a few fiancés that my parents had chased away

for no reason at all except

they wanted me to continue playing the role of eldest daughter;

responsible for everyone,

never living for herself;

the ‘good daughter’,

the one who they decided would take care of them in their old age.

Once my neighbor had released me,

I walked home still half-drugged;

I looked at the twenty seven dollars on my dresser.

My grandmother’s red rosary;

hanging on the headboard of my bed:

‘If there is a God, why does he let these things keep happening to me?’

I started crying.

I pulled her rosary off my headboard;

it’s resting place for 16 years of my life and thought:

He’s not really there.

You are,

but for the rest of my life,

I will pretend you do not.

So, I can hurt you the same way you hurt me.’

I cried and cried;

cried and cried and cried,

until my tears swallowed me up like the ocean.

I drove over to the church in town;

our monseigneur had died around that time;

and I unknowingly ran into the Irish priest, who had been sent to continue spreading God’s word through out our community,

as he was walking around the pews.

I called out.

‘I don’t want these rosaries anymore. Where can I leave them for someone who does?’

Those precious stones of great price,

sank down into my sorrow and uncertainty,

like a deep rock sinking into the black stomach bile of my heart;

I felt nauseous,

I was shaking and afraid;

tangled seaweed lying on the table.

I wanted someone to hold me,

but in the middle of a summer five leagues distance from that sorrow,

it started all over again;

God decided five years of unbelief was long or fair enough

and he woke me up to it;

I covered my ears from how loud the shouts of angels from heaven are.

‘The foam like clouds in the blue sky;

and the sky so clear that I cannot tell the difference between the two;

like heaven on earth or on earth as 'tis in heaven;

I do not know which,

but ocean of sorrow,

ocean of plenty,

my heart felt abandoned and lonely,

but now it feels so full.’