In the End: How to Think Like a Thief

In the End: How to Think Like a Thief

Maybe heaven is a place

you don’t have to gain by breaking

into it.  Maybe, if you were

weighted by your deeds

before you walked that last

celestial mile, you’d have gained

the solid weight of being

forgiven, and all those sins fall off,

barnacles of your living a thief’s

existence.  And once the flesh

you were born into is clean

and you are considered clean

and consider your whole self
clean and having not had to break

into any place anymore, maybe heaven

is not knowing all

you’ve ever wanted is simply

there to take and you don’t.

Because somewhere in need

is want.  Somewhere in need

is the need to be wanted

and be seen being wanted.

And maybe your whole life of

taking

and raping

and breaking in

all that time of being a petty

thief is left behind

in the wallets in your pockets

deep enough to hide

your whole life in behind a sewn

silken door.  Maybe heaving out

your last is asking for a hand

that when you hold the handle

of the car door of the Samaritan

who stopped to give you a ride out

of your cold hell and into

the warm where you headed can rub

your palms clean and just

take a seat and be

ok be grateful the next twenty miles

will be heaven enough:  the offer

of coffee from a dented

work thermos, a hoarded biscuit

in the glove box, maybe holding something

honestly given into your hands

will be heaven, will be, when the twenty

miles you’ve gone, grace

unzipping the purse you’d just

stolen, the one you threw

into a ditch at the end of a grandmother’s

lane a mile or so before you were given

a ride, this ride, toward heaven.