Susan Hankla

Apologia

…if I had known when I heard the knocking

and opened the door to the lady begging alms,

that all at my back was even then fading.

And that that was the Plan.

…if I had not been stretched by a stretch of road

from Clinch to Big Lick.

If I had not been suspended,

stretched, to there. If I hadn’t viewed poverty from a car.

If I had known my own.

…if I had not worn that binding panty girdle, lest I be penetrated,

if I had not wanted to be pretty.

A pretty life.

So pretty.

…if I had let life kiss me, oh anywhere.

And if I had only seen that I am no more

than that rock that holds papers in place…

…if I had known the heart-broken Jesus, or the blue-robed Mary,

or that the Plan is just like using us as teabags.

Had I known my mother’s pure heart and my father’s open one.

If I had known anything of value, even who that was

who invented the rote of writing one hundred times

“I must not talk in class.”  Even that.

That, even. Exactly that.

Or had I been just your personal teabag,

dipped one hundred times,

turning back into plain water.

Had my life not had such distance, been held at arm’s distance,

by such a trying distance.

…if I had lived at the top of a hill and not at the bottom,

might have read the sky,  

might have known money was never good here.

Might have fallen into your arms,

and, God forbid, stayed.

-Susan Hankla