I hate that backwards man in the mirror with the uneven brows. He looks back at me, thirty years old now. He moves when I move. Flabby. I want to be clean, so I browse the internet. He browses the internet. No bisexual porn tonight. We work together to find a ninety-nine cent .pdf file for sale by Emily Wilson Ministries: THE LITANY FOR HEALING OF BODY IMAGE. I purchase it. He purchases it. I get on my knees on the carpet in the dark next to the bed. His phone makes a holy halation in the bedroom. I turn on healing frequencies. He tries not to hum along. I begin to read: Forgive me, Jesus, for the times I have looked in the mirror and hated your creation. He speaks in tandem with me. I want to be clean, so I continue to recite: Grant me the serenity to accept that you made my body to be different from the bodies of my friends. He starts to smell different. Of sage. I want to praise you, Jesus, for the hands you gave me. When I glance at my hands, my fingers wrapping the phone in the dark, clutching it like a torch, they are his hands. Of want. Of wider fingers. I want to beg of you, Jesus, the courage to look away from unrealistic body standards. I want to ask for your grace, Jesus, please allow me to love the fact that you make no mistakes. He wants a cigarette. He smells like them. I don’t want to feel his hands on me anymore, so I pray to Jesus for forgiveness. If I want to be clean, I won’t see my brother’s face in my face in the mirror. Our face. I won’t nightmare of the trailer. I won’t feel his hands. I won’t go somewhere else, while with my body he does what he did. I want to be clean. I want to ask your forgiveness, Jesus, for the times. For my sacred temple. For his sacred temple. Our sacred temple recites THE LITANY FOR HEALING OF BODY IMAGE in the bedroom in the dark while our fiance is asleep, but there is a halo around the phone, but there is a number of angels playing cards at the kitchen table, but we have accidentally fallen for a phishing scam in providing shipping information for a .pdf download, but the body is a sacred temple and Jesus, for the times, for ninety-nine cents, for a dollar we can buy what will fix us, so Jesus grant me a dollar, Jesus I’ll believe again for a backhoe, and a bulldozer, and the exact geographical coordinates– the phone goes dark. God is in the room with us? God? I want to forgive you.

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
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