There Is No Grace

There is cranberry sauce somewhere Three dimes in my left hand An eight of spades in my right My mother Is making nervous conversation The relatives Are too old to care I am looking anywhere but the lines on all of these faces The conversation moves on, I don’t follow it I win the next few rounds and It is when I see my father grimace I really listen Some other relative is talking about the homeless in their Freezing state of Minnesota Except they call them other things instead Question why they don’t just ‘get a job’ Someone Chimes in with ‘they must be lazy or something’ Says God must want them to suffer My grandmother is what I call ignorant and she calls catholic I lose another dime because i’ve stopped paying attention to The game I am too busy texting my boyfriend whom my grandparents remembered as ‘Mexican’ then ‘painter’ and then ‘whats his name’ He is so much more beautiful than anything either one of us could create The conversation still revolves around street corner statues I am feeling less and less alive with each word and more and more suffocated with each second of silence Every time my brow furrows and mouth opens my mother hurriedly asks me If I’d like more apple pie To which I quietly respond ‘I've had enough apple pie family for the rest of my life’ There is nothing thankful about harassing people with no voice There is no grace in this conversation I mutter to my brother something about god creating the rainbow, and street corners, and laughter, and anything that is not white picket fences, anywhere that is not the suburbs He says ‘Amen sister’ The longer I sit here the more the walls look like they are closing in I go open the garage door just to feel the light on my skin I do not belong in this cage They ate the only other thing with wings in this house And although I do not believe in God I know some hold him like a gun filled with blanks and others have passionate affairs with faith And although I do not know what it is like to be home-less I do know what it is like to be homeless.