Poetry of Issue #7        Page 50

The Black Bible

I'd glimpsed a bible someone
had carelessly tossed in a pile
of used board games and clothes
meant for the Goodwill; just
a simple, thick black bible, its
edges just beginning to curl,
and I thought about the Lord,
what he meant in people's lives.
I looked back on my own, to
the time when I was only a child,
learning, memorizing verses in
Sunday school for a prize, long
before I knew I was going to be
broken by an abusive mother,
before the eastern Indian I had
run to broke me irreparably and
the nightmare of years that followed.
My prayers were forgotten, my voice
stolen, and I'd never laid eyes again
on a bible until now. A grain of me
remembered the day Mrs. Bayliss
the Sunday schoolteacher said God
loves you unconditionally. I didn't
give a whit, but a tiny part of me
stroked the cover of the bible,
wishing his love hadn't spilled
so little on me.

  Bobbi Sinha-Morey