God is a Mother

I am not thinking of you. 

Love, everlasting, unconditional and milk-wet, 

God is a mother flinching at injury,

sticking fingers in ears and back-pedalling: 

Didn’t mean it like that. Misinterpreted.  

God is a mother almost weeping in despair and embarrassment 

that the baby won’t stop crying.  

Watching my frame take shape on the prick of puberty 

so overcrowded with the witness that one body 

cannot contain it: three, at least, and the third 

all breath, all everybody.  

As a boy, God must have laughed at something.  

God is a mother laughing at his toddler  

who is more ice cream than toddler,  

and at me when I notice I can invoke it.  

On a bus in Blackpool, beside me as I hear your joy,  

as I reach and reach for that cackled grace, 

Oh shit, thinks God, You’re funny.  

I’ll measure my life in it. In laughing with you.  

God is a mother trying his best. 

I count my rib bones and rub salt on my tongue and  

I know, I know, I know, I know, because 

you are how I pull back my hair 

but I’m an atheist these days. I’m an atheist.