Hands Folded

• 
  Poetry and Fiction

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Hands Folded

God, all I can do is crawl into you.
I cannot walk or stand. I can only whisper words
and hope they will become psalms

in your God-ears. Do you have a God-tongue?
Do you taste prayers? Are they flavored?
Do you ingest them? Do they turn into blood

or electrical impulses, jumping from dendrite
to dendrite? Or do prayers stay as wave-lengths,
as vibrations and you collect them into glass jars

in the basement of your cellar where they make the glass
shake and the lids titter tatter? Do they bounce
on the shelves? Do the prayers, if exposed to light,

evaporate, condense, and turn each jar
into an entire environment where the atmosphere
is raining and smells of late May?

When these worlds co-exist, do you love them all the same?
Do you ever unscrew the lids and reach into the jar
with your hand and hold the prayer, spend the night

with it in your arms, close to your chest,
the pocket of your night gown? Do you sing slowly
into my folded hands? Am I holding you breath?