Leave ticket stubs from trains you missed and just passed test scores. Line my temple with used up lipstick tubes and pens you stole from somewhere; you can no longer remember where. If I were a goddess you would leave the goofy condoms at my shrine. The ones with the pictures of endangered species that say things like "Fumbling in the dark?/ Think of the monarch." Leave keys you found in the street and uncompleted to do lists.
Leave not quite used up metro cards and not quite enough canadian money to make the exchange worthwhile. You would place pretty gold pins
In my temple, the air would smell of bitter citrus from all the orange peels you would leave in offering. And instead of incense you would burn hope and let the smoke waft up to the domed ceiling.
If I were a goddess people my temples would be small. Just one of those little things sandwiched in between rows of tenement housing. But in the winter there would always be a wood fire burning and somehow the light of the day would shine in, summer and winter, through the cracked windows patched with duct tape.
My temples would be bus stops and rail stations and street carts.
And sometimes in my temples you would be visited by drag queens and grandmothers. Librarians and teachers and farmers. Sex workers and artists and poets and migrant folk. Pay attention to these visits. You have been blessed by a manifestation of my spirit, in a form purer than me.
You would leave bits of yourself, or other people. They would be a torn photograph or a page from a diary. You would leave green things and growing things. Arugula, nasturtium, bean sprouts would grow in a menagerie of pots and jars around my shrine. Tree of heaven would surge to life from the cracks in the sidewalk outside and virginia creeper would caress the walls and ceiling.
My shrine would have no place for sickly looking orchids or delicate bonsai trees but bunches of rugged kale would curl up in odd corners and in the summer stray sprigs of goldenrod would litter the open floor.
You would leave your lost and my shrine and you would leave your found at my shrine. You would lament, weep, and fall in love. You would sing loud songs of abandon in worship and you would fuck for the pleasure of it and that would be sacred. You would bring the smiles of the cashier and the homeless man playing guitar on the f train and you would leave the grief you felt when your first true love left you. And you would take my love.
When you leave my temple in worship, pockets empty, heart full, my love would walk you home.
You would leave bits of yourself, or other people. They would be a torn photograph or a page from a diary. You would leave green things and growing things. Arugula, nasturtium, bean sprouts would grow in a menagerie of pots and jars around my shrine. Tree of heaven would surge to life from the cracks in the sidewalk outside and virginia creeper would caress the walls and ceiling.
My shrine would have no place for sickly looking orchids or delicate bonsai trees but bunches of rugged kale would curl up in odd corners and in the summer stray sprigs of goldenrod would litter the open floor.
You would leave your lost and my shrine and you would leave your found at my shrine. You would lament, weep, and fall in love. You would sing loud songs of abandon in worship and you would fuck for the pleasure of it and that would be sacred. You would bring the smiles of the cashier and the homeless man playing guitar on the f train and you would leave the grief you felt when your first true love left you. And you would take my love.
When you leave my temple in worship, pockets empty, heart full, my love would walk you home.
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