We wound through farm grounds and hill towns, past a copper-mauve creek where boys in black coats threw rocks at a boy with blistered cheeks. You said it happens, said there’s nothing we can do. I looked back and kept walking forward, kept quiet as a church, searched my pockets for change for our next meal. We passed a bridal shop at dawn: a church, windows still lit, doors closed to our tithes. Teeth chattered to keep time. We kissed on a speeding train to the airport. I gave back your chess set and chocolate wafers, deleted emails and texts, no letters to shred. Left England for Texas, your rain for this drought. In Austin, my mother prayed for rain, sent reiki for Lake Travis to fill. I learned to drive and stopped going to church, learned to braid pizza crusts and prayed only to say thanks: for Texas, for first job wages, for rain when it finally came. I left Lake Travis for the Atlantic for Lake Michigan. Left my birthplace, my first state. Left the trees on 620 bending under their Christmas décor as they pointed me towards church or Texas or home.

Church is a woman
in lace or an overcoat,
honoring herself.