Someone Else’s Sin
Sinner
at seven, she begged for baptism—
plunged
backward beneath the water
in
a white robe at the front of the church
for
God and all to witness. Her sins?
Those
of the flesh. Her own. For when she told
of
the rough touch, her mother said to pray
for him, while a tiny blaze ignited in her.
Sinless
in
dreams, a stranger on a train would fall
in
love with her, his sandpaper hands
squeezing
past
the elastic band of her Sunday panties.
At
twelve, she prayed to an unhearing God
that
she would stop. A promise. At fifteen,
she
pled for baptism once more, to wash away
completely
her desire for timid kisses, the cloying breath
of
lanky boys with Ipana smiles against her
cheek
and Chapsticked lips as if—forgive us
our trespasses—those sweet-hot thoughts
that
smoldered and smelted inside her
head
and body might be someone else’s sins.
