vacation bible school

let's go out to the fields again & play manhunt
where the angels feast on dew & rats.
when i was a girl i went 
to vacation bible school every summer.
there, i would talk to god about paradise. 
he would spit dice onto the ground
& the teachers would say,
"now let's find something to despise
about ourselves." the little pocket knives
& snack time pretzels. a television
that played VHS tapes of unkept promises & sainthood. 
sometimes, if we were good, we would
all gather in the main hall 
& get fed the tiniest slivers 
of heaven. it tasted like pear. closing
my eyes i dreamed of being an angel.
of stalking the corn & counting 
tails of animals i'd swallowed. 
once, we put on plays & i got to play jesus.
a white robe. i multiplied the fishes 
& the loaves of bread. i was surprised
at how easy a miracle can be when 
you're in a room without questions. 
then, there was a catastrophe. i was a girl
playing jesus. they burned the robe. 
they told me to eat the ashes which
somehow also tasted like heaven.
all the loaves & the fishes 
turned to bees in our stomachs.
from then on, i said as little as possible
except of course to the angels. 
to the angels i told everything.
i told them about the sacristy & about
how, as an altar child, the priest had us
dress & undress him. the angels replied,
"no one is holy" & "if you run away now
you can still be a sea gull."
i regret it. not running away
across the fields & to the highway.
hitching a ride to a parking lot
where i could sew feathers 
into my flesh. instead, i stayed
the whole week every year.
survived on those slivers of heaven
&, when no one was reading my thoughts,
memories of getting to briefly be jesus.