I am seven and cross-legged on the bible study room floor
watching Nature. The gazelles have horns like hair
I cannot have until I am an older girl. One hears
Bobby Bland from the bar on the side street; our storefront
church, northern praisehouse, promised land.

I stand in the doorway and am scolded by the mothers
of our congregation, including my own.
They are shut in to kneel and tarry in prayer.
I close the door and their whispers become devotion,
become the quiet gazelle quickened to lamentation.

Over their moan, I drown into the glass door
and I watch myself run. They cannot see me—
poised gazelle, the quick of breath in my chest.
Adidas balanced in the doorway,
I am caught by my leonine conscience
from which I have stolen and not recompensed.

I knew that if god saw it all—
the green pencil I stole, the way I cursed
when I found a dead mouse in my sock drawer,
the time I spit on a boy who said he would fuck me—
that heaven would not be my home.
I tiptoe into my wailing.

I find myself bounding, knees first, into my own wrath.
They said He would not leave me lonely
and so He left me guilt.
The mothers lower their psalms to whisper.
I feel the brush against my hind legs
as night covers and the block quiets.