pieces of god-forsaken gravity

By Hannah MacKey

he walked on water and he didn’t believe

so he sank with ankle weights strapped around his bones

and an anchor coiled around his neck

            he suffocated before he drowned

but God doesn’t believe me; it makes sense after all

he told me: I invented gravity, he sank to the bottom

            and tried to inhale the one thing he couldn’t

I shouldn’t defy Him or His words—they are sweet

and have a tinge of tartness. growing bitter with simmering

doubt, springing like a fountain from my temple

            so he drowned, a form of suffocation

            it wasn’t the anchor that killed him,

            but maybe God’s old testament pride

yes that’s it—or is it blasphemous, I ask my

Catholic boyfriend. he’s not that deeply

seeded in religion, the way my body spills

wrinkled bible verses, manmade religion

 when you cut me open.

mouth sealed by paper thin and fluttering uncertainty

            that a man can cross shapeshifting expanse

            without sinking