Watching Jesus Christ Superstar With Mom

A poem about desire and obsessive-compulsive disorder

Watching the musical about Jesus takes me back to wanting to be just like mom. Forbidden Mary / Magdalene kept my attention in her citrus dress, that girl on fire who I wasn’t meant to desire.

I was truly worried that I would be like Judas, in all my ways a betrayer or taking away my life,

never one to trust my own intentions. At the writer’s conference an author said that she was very

religious once but really she just wanted to have sex. I laughed and then grimaced, hyper-visible, / because I loved God as a teenager. Mom was a Real Life Catholic when she was growing up and

her school did a production of Jesus Christ Superstar because the children needed to hate the / pharisees. When I was 8 I asked if I could give being Catholic a try even though mom was done

but I found it too slow: we don’t mention our grief or our desire to go.

If only it was warm enough tonight to drink this beer on the porch but thankfully the heat / lightning is visible flashing through the blinds. I remember when my friend Autumn, a Real Life

Catholic, wanted to go home during the lightning storm but my mom explained that it was just heat

dancing across the sky. Most events are simply atoms going out for a stroll rarely is God really

bowling. I tell the little boy I nanny that infinity is a racetrack that you can’t stop driving on and / wonder which of my strange words he will one day remember. Wanting to stop while you’re

ahead is not really a strength. I know because I used to walk around with my Easter candy and / stolen stationary in a pink duffle bag with ballet slippers on the satin. I used to check all the time

that it was still there, the bag and the chocolate shaped like a carrot and the blank notebooks and / pens. I check for myself now: Am I here and am I sure? Yes I am yes I am yes I am.