293. Two Prayer Poems - Joy Sullivan

Odilon Redon, Design for a Prayer Rug (1909)

I haven’t prayed in years / but if I did start / I would never say the word please

Buttercream

I was raised in a house that believed in the end times. By age 3, I was convinced Jesus would return before my 4th birthday and I wouldn’t get my golden-haired Barbie and the chocolate cake with tufts of buttercream. I bargained with God. I will be good. I will not free the corn parrot from her cage. I will not wake my mother during siesta. Delay your coming, Lord, just until after the party. Heaven can’t be as sweet as buttercream.

I grew up and the rapture never came. I shed God, or at least tried, but I still found myself bargaining through the years. Let me just have my first kiss. Let me just get into grad school. Let me just meet the love of my life. Let me just see the ocean again. These days, I don’t fear God’s return in a cloud of smoke and fire. I don’t pray. But when the love for this world gets too big and achy inside me, I still catch myself begging—give us our kisses, our fingers in the dirt, our sweat and our sweetness. Give us time. Please, just a little longer in these bones.

I Haven’t Prayed in Years

I haven’t prayed in years
but if I did start
I would never say the word please
because if you’re praying
then, well, that’s implied.

And I would never say the word
dear because that is too formal
like a thank-you card to your grandmother
that your mother made you write
after you got the ugly ornament
that one Christmas when you were ten
and you still have it because throwing
it away now somehow feels like cheating.

I would never swear in a prayer
because that seems risky and if
you are praying, you generally aren’t
feeling ballsy. You are all out of balls
and that’s why you are praying.

I’d never write down a prayer either
because written prayers are sort of like flags
in that you can’t burn or rip them
up so you bury them and then
are secretly disappointed when
nothing grows out of the ground.

I think if I started praying
I’d put bees inside
that prayer so it buzzed in my mouth
and fell off my tongue and into the air thick and swarming, a hot cloud
that could sting and sweat and swab like honey.

I’d put a matchbox in my prayer
so I could make a fire and if
God didn’t hear the prayer
at least he’d see the smoke.

- Joy Sullivan 

Prompt

Write about prayer. About who you talk to, when you do it, and how it has changed over time. If you don’t pray, write about how you’d pray and what you’d pray for if you did.