Catechism

It’s part of God’s plan that everyone					
dies… even you, she explained, then					
examined our faces in the fluorescent				
glare of the mildewed church basement.				
She put down her chalk, wiped her hand				
free of dust and, to our astonishment,				
broke into tears, said between sobs, It rends			
my poor heart that one day you’ll be gone.						

We’d learned about Lucy with her plate of foul			
marbles, the weather-vane slant of Sebastian’s cruel		
arrows, and Christ on the cross hanging ashen			
and bare with a barbed-wire crown and a gash in 		
his side. But my own death at 10, I had yet to imagine.		
So, I sat there confused and a little bit frightened,		
Sister grieving our end with surprising emotion
while dabbing her eyes with a lavabo towel.		

I pictured a bishop performing last rites,				
leaning over my body in his party-hat miter.			
Extreme Unction sounded more like a Daredevil			
power than a sacrament priming a soul’s final			
exit. And what of the grave that would hold all			
I was?  Would I feel being buried, would my soul 			
leave my body like the air from a vacuum-sealed			
can of cured meat floating up to a fantastical gate?		

At night, I began whispering my name while in bed– 
JoeJosephJoeJosephJoeJosephJoeJoseph–until it sounded 
like paws shuffling leaves in a forest. Then, I murmured 
the mantra WhoAmI? WhoAmI?, my sense of self blurring
with each repetition. I went to the window and stared
at the highway as headlights climbed 84
to the horizon and melded up there with the stars
at the edge, and me as a passenger where the world ends.