If we were created in God's image then when God was a child he smushed fire ants with his fingertips and avoided tough questions. There are ways around being the go-to person even for ourselves even when the answer is clear like the holy water Gentiles drank before they realized Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past. I thought those were chime shells in your pocket so I chucked a quarter at it hoping to hear some part of you respond on a high note. You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars and abandoned me for not making sense. Evidently, I don't experience things as rationally as you do. For example, I know mercy when I have enough money to change the jukebox at a gay bar (somebody's gotta change that sh**). You understand the power of God's mercy whenever someone shoves a stick of morphine straight up into your heart. It felt amazing the days you were happy to see me so I smashed a beehive against the ocean to try and make our splash last longer. Remember all the honey had me lookin' like a jellyfish ape but you walked off the water in a porcupine of light strands of gold drizzling out to the tips of your wasps. This is an apology letter to the both of us for how long it took me to let things go. It was not my intention to make such a production of the emptiness between us playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano to try and keep some dead singer's perspective alive. It's just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there and that you meant it but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open so I ate ear plugs alive with my throat hoping they'd get lodged deep enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn't have to hear you leaving so I wouldn't have to listen to my heart keep saying all my eggs were in a basket of red flags all my eyes to a bucket of blindfolds in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze ya know I didn't mean to speed so far out and off trying to drive all your nickels to the well when you were happy to let them wishes drop but I still show up for gentleman practice in the company of lead dancers hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes. Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman or is it a cattle call in a school of fish? Still dance with me less like a waltz for panic more for the way we'd hoped to swing the night we took off everything and we were swingin' for the fences don't hold it against my love you know I wanna breath deeper than this you know I didn't mean to look so serious didn't mean to act like a filthy floor didn't mean to turn us both into a cutting board but there were knives s-stuck in the words where I came from too much time in the back of my words. I pulled knives from my back and my words. I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away and I know it left me lookin' like a knife fight, lady yeah you know it left me feelin' like a shotgun shell you know I know I mighta gone and lost my breath but I wanna show ya how I found my breath to d**h it was buried under all the wind instruments hidden in your castanets goddamn if ya ever wanna know how it felt when ya left yeah if you ever wanna come inside just knock on the spot where I finally pressed STOP playing musical chairs with exit signs. I'm gonna cause you a miracle when you see the way I kept God's image alive. Forgiveness is for anybody who needs a safe pa**age through my mind. If I was really created in God's image then when God was a boy he wanted to grow up to be a man a good man and when God was a man a good man He started telling the truth in order to get honest responses. He'd say, “I know. I really shoulda wore my cross again but I don't wanna scare the gentiles off.”