15/30: if you’re looking for a sign, this may be it

by Zachary Caballero

it’s Saturday night on East Cesar Chavez and I’m on foot
in stride, side-by-side with a man I’ve known long enough
to give me back my faith in people, back again in believing
in every human’s innate goodness. Again with belief, again
with hope, again with being a hopeless believer, I begin again.

But not like clockwork, or counter-clockwork, or how an alarm
works. More like the blinking clock next to my mattress next to us after
a storm erases time off the face of the earth when the power yanks
time from and the only way to know what time it is to get up and
stop pretending the world isn’t waiting, watching me hesitate.

it’s Saturday night on East Cesar Chavez and I’m on foot
in stride, telling Marshall about my latest heartache, when
an empty church stops me, but only after I notice the barb-
wire praying to a passerby like me. The painful invitation
of god has robbed me of my desire to dance in my own hurt.

Above in the sky, an oak tree homily interrupts me once more:
Run the race of life to win an ETERNAL crown, and my life
is now in the hands of my feet, and in this moment, I’m on foot.