“Go out and stand on the mountain,” the Lord replied. “I want you to see me when I pass by.” –I Kings 19:11

When the rain came I took the road not taken and then there was another road not taken and even Robert Frost said Don’t go down that road but I took it like Usain Bolt for about four forests.  I ran through daytime television and I ran though nighttime convenience stores.  I ran past Uber drivers with their guns and pedophiles with cameras. I flew. I knew Jezebel was tweeting in her corvette.  She had won the election and the pageant and prom queen.  There were no cliff bars or Gatorade for this ultra but the devil with his forks clicking together and flies looking for an open sore giving me my mantra: you are the last believer, the last believer, the last believer.

Elijah why are you here?

With hair in my face and dirt under my fingernails and underwear I’d worn for 40 days I told God how I was the only believer left.  I could hear him trying not to laugh because he had 7 thousand believers crying out in basements speaking in tongues in China and eating their Bibles like tortillas at the border wall.

He served me a roll soft and warm like a baby’s cheek, saying This is my body, and I ate it like a cannibal at an airplane crash.  Then he said sleep, and I said Who can sleep in Sodom when they’re at the door for your virgin daughters?  But I slept like an accident victim lying under a car.

Then the earthquake came and people said Apocalypse, and the wind came and I was not raptured up, and then finally it was like the trees were doing yoga and the mushrooms stopped sweating and I forgot I had wrinkles. I forgot being human had been such a disappointment that even the magnificent fires I had managed to make out of everyone’s donated furniture and broken pencils and soggy sandwiches, even those had to die down like a euthanized dog.  I forgot the unanswered prayers that animals would talk to me or friends would rise from the dead.  I forgot to smile like a waitress or salute to the captain, curtsy to the queen touch the bottom of the submarine.  I forgot to check my texts or silence my phone for the movies. I forgot to replace the toilet paper roll. I forgot to set my clothes out for the next day.  I forgot my gratitude list and the pledge of allegiance.

And there was quiet like the way the hourglass makes its personal snowfall.

How paper sounds waiting for the pencil.

I stood there like the Jews in the shower waiting, but no gas came, just his breath because the prison visitation window slid open. He put his face against mine and his beard wasn’t scratchy but more like the softest animal.

I wasn’t in the back of the police car with a gun to my head.  I opened my wallet and I had the badge to enter my home.