Far from here, it is July
An ephemeral summer; one in which I gaze at the water tower
and wish my thirst had the strength to scale it
I watched the old man yesterday,
watched him make a church out of himself
in the afternoon’s bluing light
He held a gun in his hand like your father used to,
let his eyes glaze over as the Thursday evening ads
droned a cacophony behind him
From my spot in his rose bushes—
two thorns wound into my left thigh,
the smell of pesticide thick—
I listened to the megachurch downtown advertise
a very special Sunday brunch
It reminded me of that one bleary afternoon where we skipped religion class,
when I felt sunsick and you decided you wanted to understand
the devotion of the original faithful,
to understand how people hollowed out their whole lives for one man
We tore out a picture of an aging divorce attorney
from my mother’s copy of the yellow pages,
taped him on my wall and stared at him
in his faded, jaundiced glory
You told me to imagine we were praying to him and I did
It was springtime, and you were laughing,
and the cherry blossoms were blooming outside
You said that you would never understand religion,
but I said that I understood where it came from
If I would become hollow for anyone,
it would be you
Allison Lowe is a rising high school junior from the San Francisco Bay Area. She has previously been published in Polyphony Lit, Same Faces Collective, and The Loud Journal. She has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and Hollins University.