for Michael

There was a sheepish smile in neon light, then nothing.
“If these chairs or walls had lips, I’d kiss them,” he says.

He dreams of finding old comic books in an antique store.
He dreams of riding horses made of water into the woods.
He dreams of girls he knows or doesn’t know, waking sad.
He dreams of ugly food in a place where many women weep.

In the rain, remembering the sheepish smile, the boy, all alone, begins to pray to a god of his own design. A god whose eyes are always as red from crying as the boy’s eyes are. A god that understands the fear and the fury of 7th grade.