Christianese

I'm sitting in a coffeeshop listening

to what is undeniably a pastor

two tables away talking Christianese.

I mean, who else routinely uses

"effective atonement,"

"bearing affliction,"

"prayertime,"

"fellowship,"

or "the nature of woman was intended to"

in coffeeshop conversation?

What other non-Italian white American

frequently grasps at the air

and gestures to their heart

in every topic of conversation?

Who else spends an hour discussing

the kinds of relationships you don't

want to be in and why you shouldn't

drink alcohol in case you don't

"remain unfaithful" or can't

then make "wise choices with your God-given sexuality?"

Aie, oh me, eh bien, boohh-ooh -

his words snag on my fibersoft sweatshirt,

they snarl the symphony of my brain and this project before me,

they mix something bitter in my cup, and

now he begins talking fervently

about what was intended by

the nature of woman -

I disconnect from my inner life,

from the Christmas music overhead,

from my fingers on the keyboard.

I glance over.

He caught me looking.

Once, I would have demonstrated

my "appropriate submission"

with a "smile of humility"

and downcast eyes, but today

I silently lift my cup

and slowly sip my mocha

and then let my eyes trail deliberately away

across walls I do not see,

letting him take what he wants

from what I do not offer.

And I wonder if I am wrong,

to be so open and so closed,

to put him inside the box of his own words

and not tell him I live there sometimes too,

to create with my eyes a distance

and with my eyes, to cross it

just so I could say it was there,

to make him Other 

by virtue of a language

in which I am fluent.

And I contemplate my own accent,

who I would like to be in it,

thinking that I would like to speak Christianese only like

the ripples in a smoky mountain creek

when the snow begins to thaw

but before the gorges flood,

when the rocks still crop up, creating

little divots and purls and murmurs

in the water's silken cascades,

enough to glide, but glimmering,

rebounding like the back-throat stammer

of a tongue that has not mastered that glottal "k"

when the sleek businesswoman puts her cards on the table,

calmly, confidently, catchingly failing that last treacherous syllable

of the most important sentence - 

behind lips that smilingly, vulnerably, boldly

prove that the strength to step across a traitorous hooked consonant

is greater than the sea between continents and companies,

greater than the rocks in the rising rivers,

vast enough to make successful transactions,

and to make them still saying, "this is a tool,

a box so small I hold it in my hands,

a piece of string with which I play cat's cradle

until we all grow up

and the play money rots in the playhouses

with all the other toys we used

to learn how to live

until we knew why to live,

and I use this tool, this box, this piece of string,

only to show what it really is -

only to learn to measure and move

until there is no further need

for an allegory to introduce, escort, explain us -

only until we are all brave and kind enough

to say exactly what we mean

and listen to what surrounded the words."

I don't want to be a dialect, an accent,

a stereotypical set of gestures...

because I do not love them..

How can these toys hold my heart

which knows that though it misses the playhouse,

those creaking four by fours can't bear its weight anymore?

I am carried, instead, 

dizzy and shaking, but sure

by the voices and faces, the gaits and the gazes

of people I carry inside my heart -

a heart cracking and stretching and breaking

with truth and love

on the denominator

of time and space and gravity

and arms that hold me when

I am weary of having a changing heart,

when I am tired of even my curated accents,

when I just want to be a name. 

It is them that I see on the vacant walls 

over which my eyes trail now,

no longer escaping, no, rather, declaring

that I will not be fluent 

in the language of this man who speaks 

the words that are no longer my only mother tongue,

who knows what I no longer know - 

what my nature was intended for - 

who can find his "wayward, errant heart" 

in the air in front of him and capture it 

in the "assurance" of his closing hands. 

I see you open-hearted, open-armed,

open-ended,

and I wonder how we hold each other

in all this openness

and how we speak across it

without losing clarity, authenticity, truth?

Oh all you ones I cling to with hands too small,

I plant my muddy sneakers on,

I cut with my honest sharp edges,

I hold in my protesting heart - 

all you ones around whom 

I crop up like cold, calming current  

and on whose forbearance

I cast my half-unsubstantiated claims and consonants,

how do we forget the superimpositions,

the perceived intentions,

the burned-out cliches.

How do we just be our names?