I remember the house breathing
through long metal lungs,
forced hot air hissing through the vents
like some practical American dragon,
its warm breath sweeping the floorboards,
finding my ankles,
scattering dust motes into constellations.
Sophomore year -
a season of lopsided confidence,
tragic cafeteria pizza,
and the slow, puzzling work
of becoming who I might be.
And there I was -
in my cramped republic of a bedroom
on Lincoln Street,
as winter pressed its cold face
like a curious stranger
against the window glass.
The streetlamp outside
threw a yellow halo on the snow,
and the world went quiet enough
that my thoughts seemed enormous.
I opened Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,
thinking maybe it’d be a slog
I could bluff my way through in class.
But I was wrong,
the words crackled like flint and tinder,
and suddenly my room didn’t feel like
just drywall and vent-blown air -
it felt suspended
between here and the dark beyond.
Edwards came roaring
across centuries and colonies:
“God holds you over the pit of hell
as one holds a spider over the fire.”
And I thought -
good grief, Reverend,
ease up on the imagery.
It was just a Tuesday night - upstate New York,
and my biggest crime (so far)
was not telling the barber I hated the haircut he gave me.
But then again -
there was something in that voice,
the fever-dream force of it,
that made me sit up straighter on the bed
and wonder if he was talking
straight through time to me.
Me -
a kid with homework undone,
breath fogging in the cold spots
where the warm air never fully reached,
imagining God between bites of leftover macaroni
and a house that smelled faintly
of laundry detergent and winter boots.
I saw myself
dangling over the abyss
on a thread finer than fishing line,
and I chuckled nervously—
because of course I did.
Nothing makes a fifteen-year-old
more uncomfortable
than sudden, blistering eternity.
Still, the image stuck:
a spider,
held at arm’s length,
maybe squirming a little,
and I wondered how many times
I’d flirted with metaphorical flames
and never noticed.
Outside,
the snow did its silent factory work
layering white upon white,
while in my mind everything burned.
And somewhere between paragraphs
I started asking
the kind of questions
teachers love to assign
and rarely answer:
What collars us to the earth?
Why doesn’t the rope rip?
Is mercy a thread, a bridge,
or just the gap where we haven’t fallen yet?
Yet mixed in with the thunder
was a whisper -
a thing I didn’t have words for then:
that maybe the point
wasn’t fear at all
but wakefulness.
I closed the book eventually,
tucking it beside my bed
like a dangerous tool I wasn’t trained to use.
The vent hummed on,
steady and practical,
as if to say -
you’re here,
you’re breathing,
and that’s no small miracle.
And I -
a boy on the verge of manhood,
still figuring the angles of himself -
felt older than an hour before.
Because somewhere beneath
all that brimstone shouting
lay a tender lesson
no one printed in italics:
Be conscious.
Don’t sleepwalk through the world.
Stand on the solid boards of your life
and don’t pretend the floor was guaranteed.
After that night,
I carried a quiet ember with me -
not guilt, not terror,
but respect
for the fragile scaffolding of existence.
And every winter since,
whether life’s furnace is roaring
or the vents rattle thin heat
into a cold night -
I still remember
that small bedroom on Lincoln Street,
the sermon like a storm in my hands,
and a young man realizing
with equal parts dread and laughter
that he might fall,
but also learning
that for now, at least,
he was beautifully, wildly,
wonderfully
held.
GBS jr
2016
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