you’re sixteen & you just came home

from your very first hardcore show & the t-shirt you bought 
from a band you’d never heard of before tonight is draped 
over your shoulder like some tired flag, & you’re covered 

in sweat that’s both yours & not yours, a wave of shared exhaustion 
that has come crashing down, & it feels like a baptism, 
like first communion, like you’re sixteen & the entire universe 

is simultaneously both a mystery & a mistake, & tonight 
a stranger kicked you hard in the face, & now your jaw is a stiff bruise, 
& now you feel all thirty-two of your teeth at once, & it hurts, 

which is a kind of magic, because it hurts, but not the way it did 
when the locker door would dig into your spine, not the way it hurt 
when your father’s belt buckle would come screaming at you 

through the air, & you’re bleeding, yes, but not the way you did 
the time you slipped the pocket knife’s blade into your wrist 
accidentallyonpurpose, it’s more like the slow holy stain of the eucharist, 

it’s more like being made clean, because you’re sixteen 
& spending every night of your life afraid of hell, 
because the preacherman warns that christ is coming back 

with murder in his eyes, & you are filled with at least a million 
different kinds of sin, you’ve not been washed in the blood 
of the lamb, you’ve not been made white as snow, & you are 

so fucking scared that you will burn in hell for eternity, 
that you will choke endlessly on the sulfur & the brimstone, 
but you’re sixteen, & tonight you’ve just come home from 

the first of what you now know will be many more hardcore shows, 
& a stranger who’s now a lifelong friend kicked you in the face 
so hard your nose became a broken fountain, & there you were, 

bathed in all that red, swathed in all that pouring glory, hallelujah! 
& you knew in that exact moment that you were already 
every bit as holy as heaven ever meant for you to be

WILLIAM JAMES

william james (they/them) is a poet, community organizer, and teaching artist currently residing in Keene, New Hampshire. They’re the author of rebel hearts & restless ghosts (2016) and If I Forget Thee Lowcountry (2021). Their poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Asterales, Petrichor, the Sierra Nevada Review, the South Carolina Review, Stirring, and Two Cardinals.