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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.

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