My Mother as Christ, Self-Crucifixion.

Crucifying herself with one hand free to raise me and the other driving the stakes through her palms. Where I crawled out of her embrace and where Tuesday slipped in to encourage Jesus saves and every Sunday morning together, push the iron in a little closer to the wood splinters splitting love. Two lesbians, one black the other brown, in the back of church sad singing and hoping. An agonizing confusing worship that still fills them something I can’t, won’t understand anymore. She still sends me little pamphlets about prayer and the New White Pope and the Passion of Christ and the Dangers of Evolution. Always asking if I’m praying and when I’m praying and reminders to go to church and pray. She’s more concerned with what I believe than the topics I try to talk to her about Latina writers and ethnocentric attitudes and anthropology and so many big words and big ideas. I can see her proud-of-me eyes sweeping big words aside and butting in the conversation I was only having with myself. Her eyes say, “praise God for your fortunes and bless you for the future,” and then I give up trying to talk about what matters to me with her. And we sit in the restaurant, couch, hallway, bus, forever not talking, but wanting to hear something of each other’s heartbeats. Crawl back into each other where we all came from place. Where words don’t get in the way, and there’s no need for to worship worry words here. I try to figure out why I write this endless and why this story must be. The meditations like prayers, each one too deeply personal to edit down. Write more and more, remembering specific persons, places, and experiences in this, live to make sense of her life and ours and everyone’s. This eternal constant. Whisper, “prayer praying prayer praying prayer.” I was born to save her. She was crucified to save me. She wasn’t born with this pen to drive into her palms like I do. She took the cross, forever nailed feet in place, in faith and condemnation from sour Saint sisters. Her tired worn down bone and blood dripping feet, standing security guard, worn out callus stand and sit down of church and running in circles grinding knees, heavy wood family on her bent broken back, tense neck and crown of thorns. She took the cross. So I could kneel and start new religions.