Twenty-Sixth Floor

i remember exactly when

i stopped believing in god

i had already learned a door doesn't open when another closes

that adults lie when they promise there is a

reason for pain, an exit behind every door

i was six years old, still dumb enough to believe he

might arrive eventually, but when nothing opens

when prayers are whispered from the back of a

car that keeps moving, faith gets thrown out the window

i watched familiar streets vanish on

a day that taught me need was not the

same thing as belief; i imagined angels falling from the twenty-sixth

floor of heaven, wings snapped, bodies breaking on hell's floor

**********************************************************************Golden Shovel poem using the line “When god closes a door he opens a window on the twenty-sixth floor,” from the poem “Theories” by Cheryl Dumesnil.