Today's poem is by Rachel Custer

Magical Thinking

In November of my 40th year, I began to believe
there was meaning everywhere. It started with marbles

leaching their sparkling ways up from beneath the lawn,
orange and red glinting in the sun, and me, needing

desperately something to mean. Those marbles
had worked back from burial. It was a message

from God: Nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed.
Did that mean the time I let a boy kiss me against

his Camaro, guide my hand to something I couldn't
yet understand? The heat from his car burning my skin.

Some girls don't come easy to grace, and I was one,
skipping through every wildness I came across. God

in me like a chipped tooth I couldn't stop tonguing,
couldn't stop cutting myself against. I wanted to be

fixed. Fixed, or left alone to push a girl against a car
and kiss her while she sparkled like glass in the sun.

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Copyright © 2023 Rachel Custer All rights reserved
from Flatback Sally Country
Terrapin Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission