If That Isn’t Faith
The speaker contemplates the predatory relationship she has found herself in and the nature of being prey.
If That Isn’t Faith got its start in the imagery of the birds nesting in a large forsythia bush outside a window in my childhood home. I was entranced by the idea of these birds, who would make their homes in this incredibly visible place, being perpetually watched and catalogued by larger, predatory creatures — and yet, it’s only because the bush is open and showing its insides that we can see the birds at all. I thought there was something very interesting in the visible-invisible relationship there, something to be said about vulnerability. Combine that with some imagery from Mike Flanagan’s fantastic film Gerald’s Game, inspired by Stephen King’s book of the same name — particularly Carla Gugino’s signature blue dress — and you get this poem.
Read If That Isn’t Faith here:
The answer to a bullet wound
isn’t gauze and tape and salve
but flimsy scars with skin that rips easy.
Like fingernails on satin slips,
anything I once wanted
is invidious now and the way we tangle together
makes me think of the time I got stuck in
the sticky honey of you, if that isn’t faith.
Faith is also the bowl of seeds and nuts I laid out for the birds
in the forsythia outside my window, in the believing
of an action so predictable born from circumstance
I forget that smaller creatures are not sweeter than me by virtue of their smallness,
lessons you
taught me.
Like fingernails on satin slips,
I taught you to be fragile in the way fragile is the opposite of rough
and sweet is the opposite of sour,
not a quality in itself
but only the opposition of something else, small to big with the superior closing
and you knowing the last hints of the taste that lingers on your tongue
is the part you
remember.
I learned you fragile in my faith and that’s how you stayed
when the birds came, chirping
predictably
for seeds I had forgotten to set out, too busy wrapping gauze and tape and salve
around the marks on my sides from where you had forgotten your lessons last night.
I heard you tell the birds hello and I pretended I did not hear
the delicate snapping of their beaks at your fingers
and I pretended I did not know what that meant, another small thing being swallowed by you.
Honey almond pistachio lips aren’t worth this,
not even latke leather jacket nights around my shoulders could be
worth the sting of blood on satin silk velvet
promises my faith has faith in without me consenting.
My faith functions on its own time like a bird asking for seeds in the morning
the way classical conditioning taught us.
You gave a reward for the times I reached out my hand and my smallness
led me to believe hands in mine were the same as fingernails against my palm
and sides
and ripped shifts couldn’t ever make up for the ghost of a smile on your face.
If only you could build a whole home out of seeds and nuts in a bowl on a windowsill
instead of just a half of a home, one half in a stomach on wings
one half in a stomach flipping twice over at bedhead morning breath
sweet tea good mornings.
When you fed the bird did you imagine the bird returning the favor?
The uprising of sweet small things scares the flannel cotton cologne trunked trees like it damn well should.
Imagine me cutting up the satin you bought me by candlelight and then imagine
you trying to stop me and a thousand birds
eating seeds in the background,
and maybe you can call that faith.