Bibles You're Not Meant to See

The woman who checked

Into the motel

Told me her name was Eve

And the man she’s with

Is not her husband

I can assume those sorts of things

Most of the time

But this time--

Strange to have it

Come right out

And told to you like that

I put them in 2C

And went back to reading

My Bible

And by ‘My Bible’

I mean People magazine

Because that’s the only spirituality

I’m interested in

I came up from--

Well, I’m from Tennessee

Thank you very much

And my father bought this place

This motel

When I was thirteen

And moved us up here

After my mother died

She was crossing the street

And a car hit her and kept going

Isn’t that crazy?

My father sold fridges

But he never sold them after that

Just found this motel

However he found it

And that was that

We were in the motel business

After that

Not that there’s much
Business going on

I found the peepholes

After he died

But I knew he was the one

To put ‘em in

Because, uh--

Some of his things

Were there

Back in the hallways

Behind the rooms

A Bible--a real one

And some…

And other things

Only reason I found it

Is because I was going to sell the place

And I realized--

I was only nineteen at the time

But still

I’d been living here

Behind the office

With my father

For all those years

And there were parts of the place

I knew nothing about

Rooms I’d never been in

Did a little exploring

And that’s when I found

The hallway that starts

Right behind 2C

Views into all those rooms

And I just had myself a good chuckle

And, uh, as you can see

I did not sell the motel

Not that I spy on them

Not all of them

Eve’s the first one

I’ve sat down

And watched in awhile

Quite awhile

Maybe it’s because

She looks like my mother

Don’t take that like it sounds

It’s just a--

We don’t have--

I don’t have pictures of her

My mother

So I thought I’d forgotten how she looked

Altogether

But when Eve walked in with her married friend

I just about fell off my chair

You’ve probably already surmised

That I don’t have any interest--

Oh maybe you think I’m a pervert

But no, I might be, but not for this, uh--

I don’t have an interest

In watching a young woman

Who looks like my dead mother

Carrying on

I waited until I figured

They were both asleep

And then I…

I sat there with the Bible

Tearing pages out

And crying

Haven’t had a good cry

In years

My father found religion
Shortly before he died

Then he found another one

Then another one

Sooner or later

He made his way back around

To the old tried-and-true

But in the meantime

He had every kind of god

You can think up

And some I think

He made up himself

He’d tell me about every one of them

And try to get me to pray with him

To whoever it was

He believed in that week

When I finally gave him

What I thought he was looking for

What he was really looking for

He stared me down

With the kind of resentment you can only hold

For someone who truly loves you

And has to do something god-fucking-awful to you

As a result

But he understood

And he was holding that Bible

Tight as can be

Never asked

To hold my hand or…

Never asked me

For anything

Now I find Bibles all over the place

And in a little drawer

By the front desk

I keep my People magazine

And that’s, uh, that’s good enough for me

And my needs

I was watching Eve sleep

Ripping

Ripping

Ripping out pages

So fast

And not sure why

I knew why I was crying though

Because everything you think you forgot

Reminds you it’s still there

No matter how many--

He ripped up

All her pictures

That’s…

That’s why we don’t have them

And all these years later

Here she comes

With a man that looks
Nothing like my father

With a man who belongs

To somebody else

She had the smirk

Of a god

I tried to believe in

And couldn’t

That’s how she was

Eve

And maybe my mother

My mother was--

She stepped out

Into that street, you know

Right in front of that car

And smirking

The whole fucking time

People are so bad sometimes, you know?

You can never…

You can never believe

All the ways

They’ll surprise you

With just how bad

They are