Passage Rites

You’re ten, trying to sit still
but your blinks grow long.
You’re following crumbs from pew
to balcony, dropping bulletins
to watch them spin.         
The exhale of noise
and rituals of hymnals begin.
 
You’d rather be zip-tied 
to the ladies room sink pipe. 

Your Sunday nylons with toe seams 
make your feet squirm in your flats. 
You’re thirteen, hung over, 
your eyes too full of sun.
There’s smoke in your hair like a stale hat.
 
Is God out the window in the parking lot?
His voice in the foyer in the missionary map, 
on the lobby wall lined with colorful tracts?
Sometimes God lives in your head,
there last night when you snuck out 
and boys surrounded you,
when you threw up in your sister’s bed.