A Cross Lost in a Laundry Machine

 You

Are a Straight Cross between

A wooden Crucifix, and an old laundry machine.

You rumble and spin,

Tilting slowly off your rickety religion, and standing on one foot.

A cross lost in the laundry machine. 

 

 

Someone will always be putting pennies in the wash,

Washing you in their anger and regret and blame.

But you say you have experience with dirty people and laundry,

So you hang both on your splintered and cracked wooden arms,

Splinted together with other strips of your hard inner shell, nailed in place

With spikes made iron by your past humiliations, and your future dreams.

You piece yourself into one person and hold yourself up in a semblance of normality,

Arms outstretched to either side, trying to escape.

Putting on your best Sunday face.

 

 

But, baby, your cracks are starting to show.

Dressed up outsiders are peering inside.

They’re under your concern, but under different gods and paychecks, too,

Cashing in on your martyrdom.

They shout like paparazzi on the trail of exposure,

Chasing you out from where you were hiding inside of yourself.

You cross yourself and pray,

But then cross the streets you prayed you’d never walk again,

And make it to the liquor store undamned.

You break the damn holding up your fears and drink deep, holy water darkening your bark.

 

 

Your cross is lost in your laundry machine.

Your demons can swim, I think.

How else can they survive when you try to drown their voices,

In unaccusing silence, pawning the blame yourself?

See: when you hold yourself down under the boiling, baptizing water,

Burning you wooden arms;

When you baptize yourself free of your demons and your friends alike,

I get lost.

I get lost because I don’t know which I am,

And I,

I can’t swim.

A cross and a laundry machine, lost.