hourglass

I remember the first time I asked
a question of doubt.  
A question called bad.  
 
We cut to a Catholic school  
drowning in plaid:  
The fourth grade religion classroom...
 
My teacher, thin, with light leather skin  
and black mop hair  
that gray had just kissed -  
 
she was widely hated, called a meanie,  
but even then I had a way of seeing;  
I knew it was the snot in our noses,  
the teeth in too many kids' sneers  
taking her patience to a cheese grater.  
She liked me, I think, for understanding.  
 
Back then, remember,  
I had my head full of the sand of belief  
which was bound to leak  
from my glass body  
one day.  
Every grain.  
Soon as I didn't need to believe in something better than life -  
soon as I found the first drops of joy  
in adoring the rain  
as my classmates complained.  
 
Anyway. The teacher spoke.  
Talked about God, of course. Recapped our lessons.  
God wants....  
God thinks...  
God says....  
God loves.  
 
My attention was caught, pulled,  
at those words like cards in bicycle spokes -  
why would you..?  
How could you?  
The logic? The use?  
...How could you know? Did he talk to you?  
Couldn't find it.  
Also couldn't let her whizz by.  
So I raised my oblivious hand,  
called upon, asked the question  
that threatened my sand:  
"How do we even know there is a God?"  
 
Thirty fourth-grade heads whirled around at me.  
An exact replay of the sound they made:  
"oooooooooooo." trouble.  
 
The answer was, "We don't. There probably isn't.  
In any case, child, I was told comforting falsehoods  
starting as small as you -  
I can now only bear the weight  
of all the fear and pain and worry in my life  
by locking it in my closet  
and praying louder than all of it.  
No death in my world. Someone cares about me specifically.  
Everything will be okay. There is a plan. Always, and always a reason.  
I am too fucking far gone to question it.  
It's at my dinner table, my pew, my Christing job,  
shivering people, lost or not, huddled around a paper-mache fire.  
Like weed, like H, you return and return  
because it's just what you do.  
How often, how bad - depends how deep these lies  
connect to your need, a delicious puzzle piece,  
and joy when you sing, buzzing with your fellow bees,  
joy from a hive that has hired and swallowed me,  
that does not condone the poking and prodding of reality,  
the pursuit of truth  
regardless of what we want to be true.  
It's just like the two minutes' Hate.  
It is safer to scream.  
Easier to believe."  
 
But what she did was define faith,  
talk in circles,  
tie the circles into knots,  
the knots into a net  
and get us all back under the rope.  
Had us all fold our hands for the lunch prayer.  
I'd made us late, so we sped through  
the sign of the cross, and that day  
when I grabbed my lunchbox,  
it grazed my desk, I think.  
Knocked my hourglass off.