When you die your body rots away be

-cause it's corrupt my Sunday School teacher

says and she should know, she's 25 if

she's a day, it's as if I'm rotting a

-way right now, too, and me only ten

years old, maybe I was born decaying

so I wonder at what point in life, mine

anyway, I was in between being

born and beginning to die, would that be

my birthday but right down to the milli

-second? Something tells me that she doesn't

know or if she does she'll never tell but

she did tell us children once that when we

croak then we'll have the answers to all we

ever wanted to know. But I don’t know.

I don't want to die but I have to but

I don't know exactly when, sometimes I

wish I knew but mostly maybe not, I'm

only ten years old and if I learned I'd

die at 90 I'd spend eighty years just

worrying, I know myself pretty well

or as well as any ten-year-old can

and I don't want to die and I think not

at all but at Sunday School they say that

if I don't then I can't go to Heaven

much less Hell or is that Hell or much less

Heaven, I always mix 'em up so I

don't want to die before I learn the truth

but I'll have to ask my teacher at school,

regular school that is, where God's no good.

Nobody wants to die but maybe that's

not true, somebody does, maybe lots, but

I'm not one of them unless I fail tests

at regular school and have to go home

with the bad news that I deliver at

the supper table when my parents ask

how school was today and answering Oh,

it's still there gets me only so far which

of course is not far at all and when I

have to have one of them sign my report

card and the letter-grades are lousy I might

get grounded and my allowance suspend

-ed for a month or both so then I wish

I was dead, or is it were, and I could try

harder but failure wouldn't be the same.

After Sunday School I hang around like

I guess God does when everybody's gone,

He's got the whole church to Himself again

and I hope He doesn't mind be being

here but it does seem holy, I have to

admit it and I'm only ten years old

and usually don't take religion

seriously in case my friends fun me

about it but then of course I might die

at any time and I don't want to so

my only out is eternal life, I

have to croak to get it, though, and I can't

live forever here on Earth nor hide out

in church, neither. Is God scared, too? Poor soul.

You can't go home again unless you're dead

and that means to Heaven where God made you

and put your soul into a baby body

and you were born and after some time here

you are or I am at least and to go

home you have to die so maybe every

Sunday when I walk home from church it means 

that I'm failing, I'm living as I'm walk

-ing there but expiring as I double

back so four times a month I have to die

but I always rise again going home

and it's even the same for regular

school or when we go to the Foodway or

Korn Dawg King or miniature golf unless 

I've got them reversed but that's religion.

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Reed, Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, The Font, Chiron Review, Poem, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, and many other journals in a dozen countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.