John Biscello

Sssssh! You can’t tell yourself,

but you have a crush on God.

Between classes, in the hallway,

you see her leaning obliquely against

the edge of a wall,

books shadowed in the crook of her arm.

Your eyes track her bare thin arms

down to her wrists, which are adorned in bracelets,

then to her fingers, studded with rings.

You wonder about God’s choice in jewelry,

while noticing that she’s not wearing any make-up.

God is giggling, talking to several other girls,

and since your legs are locked in place,

you know you won’t be walking over to God

anytime soon,

but you do wonder if you can work up the nerve

to make eye contact.

Your stomach takes a break from chewing your brain,

and you lift your eyes to take in a direct view of God,

who suddenly tucks several stray bits of hair behind her ear,

and this initiates a siege of trembling

which kickstarts a surge of bloodflow in your stone legs,

and you are suddenly aware that God is staring directly at

                                              you,

her smile a beam of radiant light slivering into a thousand tiny knives

plunging into and searing your vitals,

and you recall your friend Teresa’s impassioned encounter

with that chiseled Angel, and the sensations she experienced—

the burning beyond burning, the delicious excruciation—

that she so vividly laid out for you

in that tear-stained treatise

of a letter.

Your throat swallows itself

as God’s gaze

staggers you to a point of lucid blankness—

I mean, she’s staring explicitly at you,

her mouth a curved and starry beacon,

this is happening,

between you and God,

in the hallway,

between classes,

and when the bell rings

there is a mass, manic rush,

a whirlwind of bodies and voices,

followed by emptiness

and silence.

God,

along with everyone else,

was gone.

You run your mildly numbed fingers

over your eyes to make sure they are still there.

Check.

Then your fingers crawl into your mouth,

verifying your tongue as present.

Next your fingers migrate from the cave of your mouth

to your heart, where the concentrated burning

reveals a singed hole in your shirt

the size of a fist.

Your fingers dance gingerly

upon the tender circle of pinkness

flushing your exposed chest.

It hurts in a good way.

You are not crazy.

You have a crush on God,

a requited one.

Sssssh! It’s between you

and her.