Grocery store tulips. Empty coffee cup
in the sink. Morning sky smeared
pink, like the inside
of a salmon.
I have been lonely in so many cities
and now I am lonely in absence
of the city, the crowd at the Met
that made me small and whole
as a seed.
How do other people pray?
I pray the way I read Russian novels,
get as far as the first chapter.
I go: Ahem! and then Please, God—
and that’s about it.
I hope that hope
is enough.
I think a lot of people
have wasted a lot of time
trying to please God,
that this is because people
got a lot of things wrong
around the third century—
for starters, that Mary Magdalene
was a prostitute or that it even
mattered.