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

E. Kristin Anderson

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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.

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E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin,
Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture
(Anomalous Press), and Hysteria: Writing the female body (Sable Books, forthcoming). Kristin is
the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird
Chapbooks), 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 nights at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.

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