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"Rapture"
Just the word alone, I adored.
Rapture was God's gigantic raft
on which all us Saved
would go bumping through white water
of clouds into heaven's pearly gate.
A fervent child, I never feared I'd be left
though I wondered what chaos
we'd leave behind us. My dear drunk uncles
with no one to fix their suppers.
Our cows finding no one at the barn
to throw down their hay.
At school, I guessed life would go unchanged.
My history teacher who had once
inserted a casual "goddamn" into a lecture
would stay, and those boys who lived already
only for football and Rainier beer.
The cheerleaders would keep chanting
in unison, bouncing their pompoms
against their breasts. The Catholics
would rise for early Mass
and in second period Mrs. Novacek
would peer over her glasses and quietly
continue teaching how to sew rickrack
around an apron pocket. How many cars
besides our Buick station wagon
and the preacher's Ford would go unmanned?
What if the world didn't miss us,
but remained steady on its course, one ear
cocked to the susurrus of a Pentecostal wind?
The only consequence, my desk
empty in the third row a day or two
before the janitor took it to storage—
and, stranger, my terrible mourning
for all of it.
—Bethany Reid
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