I Still Don’t Believe in the Beauty of Forgiveness
God, we spend our whole / lives persevering / long winter stars scalding / us / as if heaven’s a place / real as the corner diner / alight all night / where I enter easily even as a sinner / hungering for eggs / over easy & devour them. / Let’s cover this early on: / You’ve already forgiven / the despicable things / I’ll do. Fire-starter, fire-water. / Fireball of my nights, / the last blackout/ last eclipse. Except I keep waking / up here. Fanciful, keeping to rituals / black coffee at 6 am despite a blazing hangover. / I wish I was never. / Born catastrophe, moss in my teeth. Can a spirit / hide in a plum? In / a bird? Deserted / city? They told me so many people / in these rooms / want to welcome me in / this glass hour. I used to say / it’s not my fault / I was born blackhearted / death wish in my skull. These sober saints, / who believe in / fruited sufferings to come. / We’re lacerated with an intimate thorn / from the crown. / Bedclothed in firelight, / Christ’s memory howls in my haunted / room. Lord, do / you still know me / after all I’ve done? When we took / the baby lionhead rabbit / to go to sleep / because the cancer pushed her eye out the socket / what undid me was / her golden-white hair / tufting across the floor / as if she hadn’t died. / This is how I understand / death: I’m here now & you’re still there. / If you awaken, you’ll hear my creak. / Nothing left but God’s voice, Please—If the body’s a door / a well hole / a bridge—I’ve tried to cross / from this body, a sacred wound left / as if God lives on / in witness trees, in my mud. / As if God lets me live on, eternal / the past, present & future / the old me / lit, lonely & my own sad light colliding / with a new me / irradiated walking so close / to this side of paradise. When I sit / in a pew / thinking of every awful / wrong I’ve done / to another person I know the giving / back will never end. / I told myself until / I can forgive myself. Until I fold back / to a child / who can see / morning glories / with new eyes. But no, my God / who’s always there / shows me only / he can remove the steely stench. / All you need to do is ask. / Ask how to turn / your life holy. / It’s already done. / The light coming from centuries / ago is just now arriving / on time.
A 2017 NJ Council on the Arts poetry fellow, Nicole Rollender is the author of the poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (Five Oaks Press) and The Luster of Everything I’m Already Forgetting (Kelsay Books, May 2023), and four poetry chapbooks. She has won poetry prizes from Palette Poetry, Gigantic Sequins, CALYX Journal and Ruminate Magazine. Her work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Ninth Letter, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill Journal and West Branch, among many other journals. Nicole is managing editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal and holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University.
