If you don’t stop believing, what will happen to you?

a poem

if you don’t stop believing, you will fly through the roof in the middle of the night when astral projecting and you will meet Sally Field in a field wearing a habit and you will ask her if she really could fly in the 1960s and she will tell you it was only a role she once played and you

will tell her about the role you are now playing and how you don’t know if you should keep playing it because the costume is tight and the scarf is itchy and the helmet is flattening your hair which is falling out anyway

into the sea because it sounds more poetic than ocean and you think of the poet Ocean Vuong who wrote in his poem, “Devotion,” that the “difference between prayer and mercy is how you move the tongue,” and now i … i mean you, no me, it’s me,

it’s always been me and i - so i -

so I wonder how i’ve been moving my tongue all of these years and maybe now is the

time

to move it into a new town where autumn leaves technicolor a warmth like a Lifetime Christmas movie, and you think hey, i can celebrate Christmas and no one would ever know and then everyone can love me again and

i

can don’t stop believing in peace, love and togetherness like i did when i was young

and i see an old black woman in the fruit isle at Trader Joes and she reminds me of my dead mother and i pretend i want an orange just to be near her and she whispers to me, ‘it’s gonna be alright, honey” and at first i hear “annie” instead of “honey” and i think she knows me and maybe she does and anyway

i choose to believe her.