Miracle
Gale Acuff
I guess one day I’m going to have to
die. Miss Hooker says so. She’s my Sunday
School teacher and knows all the dope about
God. She tells us not to be afraid since
we’d just be going home to Heaven but
she also says that God will judge us there
and if He finds that we’ve sinned too much then
He’ll have little choice but to send us to
Hell, the Bad Place, Satan’s domain, where he’ll
punish us but good for disobeying
God too much. I’d like to know how much is
too much. When I asked her she answered
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. She took
her glasses off to say it, which means she
means it and God does, too. I’m sorry I
asked but it seemed like a decent question.
So what I have to do is not to sin
at all, she says, which is going to be
hard especially since I’m going
to sin anyway—nobody’s perfect.
But it seems to me the safest thing is
not to die at all. But everyone does,
she says—nothing lasts forever but God,
not even the universe, not even
rocks and they’re not even alive so if
I am then what chance do I have? She says
none and all I can hope for is Heaven
and eternal life up there or maybe
Hell and eternal death down there. Damn. So
I’d better watch myself—no more cheating
on tests in regular school, no talking
back to Mother, no forgetting to feed
the cat, no swiping candy from the store,
because, Miss Hooker says, if I die in
sin then there’s no escaping the clutches
of Hell, I’ll go automatically
without even a glimpse of God and what
I’ll be missing. After Sunday School I
crept up to Miss Hooker and told her that
I don’t want to go to Hell and that I’d
rather go to Heaven. We knelt and prayed
but I peeked and that’s probably a sin
but I got a good look at her freckles
and I almost kissed her on the jaw,
ten-year-old lips touching her twenty-five-
year-old face and Truth somewhere in between
and I don't know whether it was Satan who
was nudging me to kiss her or it was
God and whether He stopped me or Satan did.
I guess I could’ve asked but I was
afraid all over again. Who bit my
tongue? I guess when I die I’ll find out but
I wish I knew now. So I rose and walked.
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Slant, Aethlon, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Chiron Review, George Washington Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write., Oracle, Hamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, Westerly, and many other journals.