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May 2, 2019

An Afternoon Is a Test of Faith and I am Gone Again

(After the X-Files)

By E. Kristin Anderson

I confess this sin:         I have accepted the beast in me.         And I want it to rain.
Hard.        Like you, Dana Scully, I’m angry at God         and in absence of God
the universe.        My body is rigid with absence         and I scoop winter into myself
these red oak leaves on the wind almost butterflies.         Dried up little messengers.
*
I’ve recently learned that sometimes sisterness        is otherness         and no flesh
bears witness.        I ask Saint Peter on the cross         to come down for my fever.
I open my mouth for a prayer.         Our better angels are unreasonable and I might need
a different order to drag me out        of this apartment.         Scully, you know mercy
*
but you would hold your breath rather than protect yourself.         Hold your phantom girl
like I hold mine.        If I gave you a message could you deliver it?         To anyone?
I can’t travel right now.        I don’t trust the teeth to stay in my mouth.         I genuflect
toward a yellow sunset, just past the fence.         I check the trash to know if I dreamed this
*
or if that moment        was really real.         I swallow medicine and breathe hard until
cut grass is stuck in my throat.        This is how I protect myself, Dana.         Please give me
permission to close this door        for just a little while.         I need to purge that bright white
light from my own body.        I’ll fold myself into a church         hold my emptiness like a fist.
*
*

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College alumna with a B.A. in classical studies, Kristin’s work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Texas Review, The Pinch, Salamander, Barrelhouse Online, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and FreezeRay Poetry. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press) and is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press, forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.

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