Nobody really dies my Sunday School
teacher says, They live on in Heaven or
in Hell if you can call life in Hell life
so I say Yes ma'am so maybe she'd say
damn next but Hell and damn don't count as bad
words at church and Sunday School but still it's
pretty good to hear them there and Preacher
and my Sunday School teacher saying them
and they not counting against them as sin
but of course if I say them then I'm darned
unless, I guess, I say them like they do,
sort of like the language of the trade or
at least a couple of the words and at
regular school they're vocabulary.
At regular school, when you're dead, you're dead.
Nobody lives forever, nobody
should want to says my Sunday School teacher
and she should know, she's 25, plenty
old and I'm only 10, it's amazing
that I know anything but I do know
that one day we'll get married, my teacher
and I, and I mean to each other, man
and woman or woman and man, it won't
matter to us much because there's something
about love that makes it better than what's
fair, justice call it, and equality
and I told her so after class today
but she just laughed and shook her head and said
You men are all alike--even you boys,
which cut me off before I could agree.
I don't want to die, I'm ten years old and
in perfect health except for growing, ha
ha, so it will take some time before I
settle into being an adult, my
body anyway, as for my mind I'm
not so sure and then there's my immortal
soul is what my Sunday School teacher calls
it, she should know, she owns the only
bakery in town but when I stop by
after school for one of her chocolate
chip cookies as big as a small pizza
or a brownie with enough sugar to
operate a dozen beehives she says
that I look taller and that I'm massing
muscle and that one day I'll make some girl
very happy but she won't be the one.