To Pray
By Luke Janicki

In high school, eighth grade, earlier even,
the priest would come in and tell us

to pray for our future spouses, our wives out
there waiting somewhere, hoping for signs

while we wander this world sculpting the suitable
virtues, chiseling each decision, and

with what imagination the priests introduced
the spouse most chaste, I first wondered

at the man in my dreams with a falling feeling
this was not what the priests intended, not God’s plan,

something caustic, already immolating,
prayed for with great trembling, prayed

with great price, like dropping into the pit each
wager, each life’s need, each routine teardrop,

daily confusion that I had not amounted turned
into a visitation of a man myself saving;

do these clergy know they’ve given me as much
or that they could have clarified much earlier

what I thought would be the death of me; do
they now instruct all my kin, sitting in desks,

to pray as their peers do for this same spouse,
to save their lives now while they can,

to wrest this male vision instead of digging to extract
something cerebral that can’t be removed, something

from their hearts as deep as Noah’s whale, as far
as Job’s ends of earth, something ribbed

and formed of one’s flesh because it is 
their same sex and not otherwise, not

made for removing in the first place, but for remaining,
not curled up in the dark, but standing there

on two feet, on future streets, my prayers in his hands
like lost petals, the least of those told

a cryptic instruction not for them, which has become
bold script on some restaurant cornerstone,

words in the depths where I decided it wasn’t over, and
again, not to kill but to plant, not to pluck but to nurture;

what I would have given to know my interior struggle would
be brought back to me so transfigured,

so fraught from my youth while, over time, wrought with gold,
sung together in retrospect as the priest’s daily office;

what I would tell that cloaked man casting the plan to
which I would become prodigal, the path where

the seed is trampled underfoot from which I would
run, jump, slide, bushwhack for miles

toward fountains, to the good soil, and put my hands
down to the earth saying, God, thank you.

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Luke Janicki lives in Seattle, Washington. He has published poetry in Trampset, Funicular Magazine, Ghost City Review, The Milk House, JMWW, miniMAG, and other publications. He was nominated for Best of the Net 2025. He holds a B.A. from Gonzaga University and an M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame.

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Artwork Source: “Two Studies of Hands,” by Alphonse Legros. From the Public Domain.