A Retort to the Representative of the Catholic Student Association and to You, Heavenly Father, Who Must’ve- by Annie Toleos

A Retort to the Representative of the Catholic Student Association and to You, Heavenly Father, Who Must’ve

by Annie Toleos

Asked me what I was living for—

Never mind that you cornered me on the crosswalk with your pamphlets, or that I had just walked a blistering mile from the train station, because you looked at me with His eyes: eyes that sliced clean through my love-bitten leprosy: the marks beat red on my neck, your holy head high with me under heel, undermined and annihilated…

Never mind that, because any other day I would have pulled down my beanie like I was ripping the skin off my face and stalked off, looking inhuman,

but today has caught me in its jaws, so I puff out my chest, say, “I live for God,” all the while neglecting to mention that my God is nothing more than a shout across a hallway, a string between two cans, and then you hand me a pamphlet for your Evening Worship, to which I feign an orgasm,

because if I’m anyone’s Daughter, I’ll find him with a hand pulling my hair and my face flush, thrust against a bedspread, Amen.