by K.M. Hanslik
Bleating Thing Magazine

Behind the junkyard where I used
to wish myself away—the child’s

heart you kept buried
beneath steel, & me calling

it stupid, saying this
is where things go

to forget themselves, but you

kept believing we’re one
far-flung miracle from heaven, & I, as

wingless as ever, wanting
to believe you.

The phone rang off the hook to the edge
of a cliff where I

I felt my body melt into
a sunset of afterwords—like

when you said you’d keep track of us &
I said sorry, I keep forgetting the days

you meant “keep” like a fossil record,
like closing a fist of limestone around

Sundays you should have spent in church,

and my pendulum heart free-swinging,
the word finite crashing through

the wall of it when I heard. I wish
Jesus didn’t die for us. His piety is a

honey-beckoned prison; we’re suffocating
in forgiveness.

Days that I pray are the most blasphemous,
on my knees screaming that God

is rich in blood diamonds & His son
is a nepo baby.

I want to call and tell you: God is a bad liar
and Jesus still loves you—but of course

you know this already. I think of you /

in the junkyard / I think of you in
the graveyard, slipping

your heart inside that
too-forgiving soil and

I think of bodies
of steel, bodies of flesh, all

lost / in that darkness
of sanctity—Jesus’ face backlit

against the clouds, palms opening towards
me like begging

for spare change.

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K.M. Hanslik is an Ohio-based writer and editor who currently works with The Turning Leaf Journal. You can find her most recent works in Bleating Thing Magazine, Black Glass Pages, and Corvid Queen. Find her and say hi on social media (@kmhanslik.bsky.social) or online at kmhanslik.com.