M a t h i a s S v a l i n a —

Trustfall

For whom do you sing?

you might ask of the dump,

of the needle in the carpet, waiting

for the pale arch of a bare foot

to decorate. When you sing the dead

rise into constellations, but

only if you sing the song right.

It’s not enough to tell the story.

Forgiveness is a song the size of a fox

beside the train tracks, chewing

on something killed by the train.

I sing to see if I still exist, though

there are no ghosts in the desert.

In some versions of the myth

you must paint the river each day,

then each day list ways to stay

afloat on what you’ve painted.

Trustfall

At twelve I worked in the church rectory, 

answering phones, opening the door to visitors. 

Some nights, when the doorbell buzzed

I’d set my fantasy novel face-down & open to find

sometimes a man there, arms folded tight 

against the humid dark, sometimes a family, 

children sleeping in their parents’ arms.

Always, they were surprised to find the door answered 

not by a priest but by a boy, & I, each time, 

just as surprised to be that boy.

The visitors sit on the wooden bench by the door 

as I called the on-duty priest. Sometimes the visitors 

at night wanted to explain something to me 

& I’d face them & listen, as if I could become someone 

to whom one might explain need. 

And when the visitor sat in silence on the bench, 

in full view of me & me of him, I never knew 

if I should pick my book back up & keep reading. 

It was a holy time—I can say that now—waiting 

with someone who need helps for someone to emerge

from behind a locked door, waiting 

for the ritual of asking to begin. 

On shelves in the office closet we stored boxes 

of unblessed hosts, packed like rolled coins, 

beside reams of paper & the boxes of staples.

Once I opened a package of hosts & ate a handful, 

like chips. The hosts taste like glue, but I ate them all.

It seemed somehow rude to waste them.

The other night, I got an instagram dm from Cassie, 

who died a year & a half before. 

I wrote back wtf? but whatever’d texted 

still never replied. We’d talked in the days before her death

& she was distressed in some way I couldn’t understand. 

I sked her if she needed someone to talk to, 

& she said Aren’t we talking right now? I asked her 

how I could help & she just laughed. And at least one priest

who lived in that rectory, with a warm polish accent, 

was later on the list of child-abusers, those the Church moved 

from church to church, rectory to rectory, safe in men’s silence, 

beside boys like me who opened doors on dark nights

to downturned faces or pained &  smiling faces, 

all those faces in memory fused into one light,

We had a deal with a nearby motel. I’d book a room for one day 

if it was a solitary man, a few days for a family.

When the priest walked the family to the door

he'd open his wallet & count out cash into the man’s palm, 

though I recall this scene too perfectly, so uniform, 

memory changing real people into tableau, 

into supplicants bathed by a single source 

of light, shadows holy in delineation,

the priest giving the cash in front of me, I 

the bearer both of witness & of shame. 

But I'm going to end this poem with a lesson. I know, I’m sorry, 

but it's raining here in whatever cold night in which 

I am forever writing this story further away from itself,

 & it'll be raining again, somewhere, as you read this. 

I didn’t know then how to say anything about salvation 

& shame, but there’s always something you must swallow 

& pretend it’s what it’s not.  It’d be nice to offer my hands 

out into the dark, into the cold rain & let the rain fill them,

to bring the rain to my mouth & chew it like light, 

like salvation is real, & we can be forgiven.

I’d like, I think, to have been born a book,

but when someone asks for help & you can, you help. 

.