He did not drink coffee or sweet tea,
but his eyes melted the ice;
his words blew the steam from my cup,
only for me to see it was half-full.

I liked Elder Roberts,
Caitlin liked Elder Johnson,
but my mother loved them both,
for they represented to her
something she’d once had & lost.

She never spoke of them;
it was as if she’d only lived
to give life to me,
but she told the elders
of her pre-Katryn existence—
a fantasy.

Clean-cut & -shaven,
they didn’t smoke or swear.
They were the wheat
once the chaff had blown away—
a kernel of what all were,
absent the world.

We never touched,
but I fell in love,
for he unearthed something inside me
I’d not known existed—
that spiritual essence David had buried.