The Yellow Hoodie With the Black Lion On It

It was a new world struggling to be born in
that desperate look in the eyes of boys,
part of the last generation—
where sweet old widows in Lincolns
were treated like queens in the middle pews,
the curved and rounded-off modernity of their Town Cars
(their last cars)
so different
from the sharp angular everything of their husbands and fathers—
and the piano in the basement was a monument, not
some ruin gathering dust, not
some poignant pang that some girl
would feel again her sophomore year abroad,
when Dublin or London or Prague
would convulse and dissolve in synesthesia
because of how a local bread tasted.

No, those boys
heard Switchfoot for the first time,
or were allowed to listen to Relient K,
and adventurously, cautiously
could laugh along at the one out-gay kid’s reads and jokes
and wear American Eagle for the first time—
hair a little shaggier now, or
oh, maybe, a hemp necklace—
a guarded MySpace—
and these things he
did, heard, saw, smelled,
made him
want to
move,
or
dance,
and
this freedom, this fire
that came with a stutter and a stammer
and a codependent situationship with
That Guy From Bethlehem
so bound up
he
(He)
may as well have been their first boyfriend—
it was the most powerful thing on Earth.

From those first yearning looks, those
first little sparks of knowing something inside him was so much larger,
a rabid firebird of desire would fly—
that boy’s first kiss was,
in a sharp inhale,
a cry, a grip,
and a Shakespeare quote, a shaky voice
whispered in cold woods behind their rectory.

And maybe, some years later,
he will see Odin along the riverbank,
or maybe
he will see Neptune in the ocean’s sunset,
or maybe
it will be Wicca—
magic, magick¸
(spell it right)
to keep their certainty in faith beyond sight
still alive, still well—
but He will always be there—
Jesus is his ex,
and you never forget your first love.

Their fathers were steely,
before, during, and after—
prisoners of their own upright selves
who didn’t like
that they couldn’t search their own feelings and the Almighty wasn’t a feature
so what would they ever do with a son like that?

And their mothers worried—
worried, worried, worried—
a decade hence you’d see them
together, mom and kid now grown,
at the food court at the mall and
nod to yourself, well
maybe it wasn’t all hopeless, they figured
if their child kisses a man and lives,
and has to face God later—
it’d be so much better than
if their child kisses a man and dies,
now—
like that poor thing out West.

But forgive them, Lord.

The greatest crime of that stately church
was that gave them all a home—
and then, when someone they knew died—
that nice old widower what drove the S-Class and used to hand out candy, or
their grandmother, or
their golden retriever
(sweet sugar-powdered face with graceful paws stirring no longer
the grassblades of their childhood backyard)—
they would have to board planes
or get on highways
and all come back—
they would forgive
all the terrible things
it had done to them.

The person in their absence becomes a mourning in itself—
so that the patient asphalt of a parking lot
is the last vast space that will still listen
to a prayer.

Christopher David Adkins holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of South Florida, where he teaches American history. He is a folklorist, historian, and poet whose work has been published in Alaska History, Preternature, South Florida Poetry Journal, and The Eckerd Review.