In fourth grade I gave up candy for Lent. At a sleepover my friend Jackie waived peach rings in front of my nose and told me, “Eat it! It doesn’t matter!”

In fifth grade I gave up ice cream for Lent. My teacher Mrs. Barron sent me to the nurse’s office after I refused the class Saint Patrick’s Day ice cream social.

In sixth grade I gave up soda and halfway through March I set a can of diet coke down on the counter. I had forgotten. That week I went to confession, bouncing my knee across the table from Monsieur Schaffer who always hung his head like the slouching neck of a daffodil in the rain.

“I broke my Lent promise.”

He leaned across the table and pushed the sheet with the act of contrition written on it away from my face so he could look at me.

“There’s no one way to prepare for Him. It can be easy to give up things. It’s hard to pray.”

I took Lent and erased both ends to smooth them out into ordinary time. I said I’ll make hail Mary’s from the decades of peach rings– count our Fathers in plastic sundae spoonfuls–

I’m trying to make my mouth a steadfast prophecy– no I’m not a Saint but even a girl who drinks diet soda and gets coffee with the devil sometimes and pray with her rib cage and her lips like a coffin lid holding nothing inside.