My mother tells me now;
“I regret my decision.
I should’ve had you baptized
as a baby.”
She said before, “I want you
to get to choose.” But
I grew up to bristle,
like the backyard pines,
with doubts and secular opinions
and an absentminded atheism.
I might be going to hell.
Unlike my cousins who
wear their foreheads
oiled and ashy.
