WEBVTT

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So I went to--

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I grew up in Midland, Texas.

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It's the Permian
Basin in West Texas,

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and I went to a
school called Trinity.

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And I was there from
the time I was five

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till I graduated
from high school,

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and I feel like I only recently
kind of came to terms with--

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I guess like what I'll call
my Anglican flashbacks.

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So this came out of that.

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It's called "The
Doors to Trinity."

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The doors to Trinity.

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I never lost 'em.

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Here they are, scratch
handled, sweat gunked.

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I didn't learn to reach higher.

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I just did, first
on my toddling toes.

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But I did learn to borrow:
rides from strangers,

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how to dress or
laugh, cash stacked

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in aluminum foil
meant for villages

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too far away for me to care.

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Yeah, I did that.

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Snuck off and unwrapped myself.

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For a card to call a
boy in another state who

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didn't want me.

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Rings that gave my knuckles
grass colored scars.

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A journal to carry my sins in.

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I ached and stole and swallowed.

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I didn't notice all the lesions
I hadn't meant to hoard.

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I stopped wanting
to be held, or told.

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Yesterday was tomorrow.

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I was gentler then.

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Not yet hollowed, but always
unkempt, always unauthored.

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First the tornado cubbyhole damp
with forged permission slips,

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then the locker
packed with pens.

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I chewed into saliva
twizeled plastic fodder

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papered with magazine
cutouts of boys

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grinning in a different color.

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Then I began to rub out
the foulest parts of me

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until I was vellum.

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But I stayed smudged.

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A blue pat of drugstore
eye shadow, brush softened.

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You know how it all
stretches and slows,

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how one minute you're
falling on your diapered ass

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for the first time, and
then the next mistake

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kept you thirsting for more?

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I became crucifix and spear,
the cut and colored glass,

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and hymns I drank
but never at home.

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Even then I wanted to
stick out my tongues

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for any form of leavening.

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I am chosen, I
prayed, I was born.

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I took a right, a
left, and another left.

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I'm sometimes late
but I still love

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to run a palm all alone
around the shining altar.

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I still believe I could be, like
you said, anything I wanted.

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When I did, the light
never seemed to falter.

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I always did want to sit up--

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I always did want
to sit with my feet

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up in those high thrones
I called fancy chairs.

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How fat with love my
wild, orange-scented hair.

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Brave disciple,
do not be afraid.

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Look, oh look, the stained
child of God is still smiling.

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