Why did you have to break the vow that I made?

Born again they say.

“You must be born again”.

I was.

Twice.

The first for childlike faith.

The second for naïve visions of hands holding hands.

There was a day when I was baptized in the usual way…

With water on a Sunday.

The day I remember most though,

Is some dark November.

In a strange light, and covered in bedbug bites.

Some dark November,

I was born again. Twice.

I sold my soul to the quivers of my body.

To the way I heard someone screaming,

Far away, but embodied in choking chest.

I sold my soul to feverish ache.

To insomniatic rage.

To how carpet tastes like nothing but coarsens the cheeks.

I was baptized in that unusual way.

Wonderment crucified beneath the scathing hot rivers I cried that night.

Raised to walk in newness of life…

And it’s still the newest life, I don’t know how to live.

The newest life I never wanted.

Spitting image of this unfamiliar family…

Singing for the outside our dearest song-

“Never be born again twice”…

“No, never be born again twice”.