Used to

I used to wonder if snapping my fingers

could change my fingerprints

almost like melting snow and refreezing the crystals.

If every snap was like creating a brand

new snowflake on my hand,

then certain songs on the radio had to be like

road trip blizzards in the middle of June

I used to think that snowflakes were

pieces of lost fur from the Moon.

A place so close to the sun

it had to shed every January

I used to think that God was a Spider

and that clouds were his webs.

Woven in the sky and shifting in the wind

tight enough to catch angels

but soft enough to let the ghosts slip through

I used to wonder if the ghostbusters

could tell the difference between

guardian angels and haunted houses.

and if they could,

was it by checking the fingerprints?

Wilbert Turner III is a writer from Philadelphia who writes about the tremors that ripple from the margins of society all the way to the centers of power. A graduate of the New School's MFA you can find him on social media at @Wil_to_Win and his podcast Viewer Digression on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all other platforms.