if my mama doesn’t love me, will i still get into heaven?
will you touch me on the cheek, will you say that i’m forgiven?
i won’t be wicked anymore; i’ll go to church, i’ll wear a dress—
i don’t know what i wanted, but i know it wasn’t this.
if i swear i’ll never kiss a girl again, will it absolve me?
if my mama thinks i’m sick, am i someone you can heal?
i took communion from her mouth; that’s not the way it’s meant to go—
this isn’t who i really am, my mama would’ve known.

our lady, queen of heaven, mother mary, may i ask—
if your venerated son had never been a holy man,
if he’d travelled down a road lined not with palm fronds, but with flags,
his shoulders flushed with summer sun, a kiss upon his brow,
no perforated hands and feet, no blood or thorny crown—
what then, would you berate him? watch him turn the other cheek?
and if you think that you’d embrace him, could you do the same for me?

if my mama doesn’t love me, will she still get into heaven?
will you touch her on the cheek, will you say that she’s forgiven?
let me tell you how she used to wash my hair when i was small,
how the sink is full of plates of food she carried down the hall,
and how, today, she cut an orange,
pressed the slices to my palm.
if i have to leave this house, will you promise you believe me?
if my mama thinks i’m sick, is she someone you can heal?
she is good, tell st. peter,
she is good, she holds my hand.
she sings me songs. she pulls me close. she doesn’t have to understand.
i don’t know what she wanted, but i know it wasn’t this,
a daughter wasting prayers on every selfish, earthly wish
of smiling girls and wandering eyes, of marching arm in arm,
a daughter who’d much rather never kiss a boy at all.

if my mama doesn’t look at me again, will you still see me?
if my mama doesn’t hear a word i say, will you still try?
i don’t want a love that’s holy, i just want it to be mine.
if my mama doesn’t love me, can i stay with you tonight?