Gibberish

From her knees, she fits her turning

body in the recess — three feet high,

two feet deep and wide — in the brick wall

of her parents’ basement.

Folding her legs, she becomes invisible,

not that she wasn’t already.

The vault affords her a vantage

from which to decipher.

A block of wood lies on the coffee table, five letters

carved into the block, all caps, the word

exclamatory and imperative: J E S U S

doesn’t speak to her.

Her parents don’t realize this because they never asked

and she learned to survive among the unseen and the unheard,

hiding her voice, as well as her body,

in the alcove of the wall.

The raised surfaces of the plaque —

the spaces before and after the letters — contain

a secret message, though,

as easy to miss as a girl seated in a cave.

Seven letters, all lowercase, save for the I’s,

whisper another name for god: r I b n I b n

speaks to her of the sanctity of the uncounted,

the sovereignty of the self.

Crawling out of the cavern, she pictures herself rushing upstairs,

eyes wild, wielding the plaque like a sword,

proclaiming the good news. She might just do it, too,

if she thought anyone would notice.

Bob Kirkley serves as a high school English teacher in the Florida Keys. He has published fiction in Adelaide Literary Magazine and poetry in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic. He can be reached at https://www.facebook.com/bob.kirkley.7/.