from weheartit.com

After the dream, he wakes afraid and straight away drives, sweat on his face, to that cinder-block building down the road, the one we believers pass by with eye-rolls. The Fortune Teller wears hot pink velour, gives package options for the reading. Name and birthday, then she lays the cards down. She knows details: dates, number of men, months long. He leaves shaking all over, gripping the steering wheel, legs bouncing.

His mother hasn’t really shown her love, though it’s there, since he confessed it. She’s hurting. I wonder if all our boys are dreams we eventually have to lose.

I go to see my friend in the last hour of his work day, and we drink wine and laugh so hard. He knows more hymns than I. He sings beautiful tenor, brought up in the words of praise, the gospel right there for the taking. He knows all the words, asks me, “What have I opened myself up to by going to that woman in those velour pants?”

I say, “And what about God?” And his eyes go completely desperate, and he says, “I don’t know. I don’t know about God.”

The spirit world won’t hide forever. I’m nearly seeing it with my eyes lately, how our skin is the shallowest part of life, how it can’t earn or hardly learn rightness – not for any of us.