Folding Hands
(A Ghazal)

We made our own god from sheets of used paper,
a deity from folded squares, a gospel in newspaper.

Fingertips turned black from transferred inclinations,
pushed planes onto their backs; black-eyed bruised paper.

We put our faith in lines erased, sang scripture in our segments,
gave god the name of our bad habits; bottoms-up booze paper.

Repeating tessellations sobered our methods and our missions,
dogma-creased diagonals undizzied our confused paper.

We sacrificed our names in the folds of steps one and two,
cross-legged, we sat on impossible ground, hummed as we reused paper:

Sophia, a hymn to wisdom, we turned flatness into form,
swallowed our conceit and signed our sins away on truce paper.