My father taught me words

my mother taught me saints.

Somewhere in between I learned to write words on my legs.

My father opened each chapter book like a paper back bible by my bedside while I begged him to preach the fires and stardust of distant tongues. I told him I could build a magic tree house and be a volunteer fire fighter. That I would make dragons from clay and feel helplessly at the back of my wardrobe for winter snow. I told him I’d make God a lion. I told him to read more when even the green tree-frog night light would flicker as if it had regressed into a candle. He dare never stop.

My mother talked about saints like distant cousins who we might meet at a wedding or a funeral reception at the same Italian place we always go to. She taught us we could bleed milk. My mother never preached– but she did make magic of martyr blood and I remember thinking how nice it would be to die for God and just go straight to heaven. I thought it was unfair because no one would ever throw me to lions.

Somewhere in between them I picked up a pen. I wrote stories from stick figures and prophecies on my squishy fourth-grade thighs in the shape of hearts and snippets of poetry I could not yet grasp.

My father taught me words.

my mother taught me saints.

And in between a writer emerged– bleary-eyed and kneeling before the glory that is the black words.