by Angela Townsend

Lord, make me farfalle. For too long I have been curled in upon myself. St. Augustine diagnosed the proud as incurvatus in se, turned inward. Were sin made of semolina, it would be tortellini.

Even now, I flatter myself. I try to pass as a dumpling. I may be a closed circle, but at least I am plump with meaning! But there is no wholesome ricotta to be found. I navel-gaze into a gaunt hoop, a store brand Spaghetti-O. I marinate and analyze. I patrol my perimeters until all the sauce slips off. I gnaw comfort at great cost.

I cannot reform myself, but you are known to love the stubborn and the starched. Make me orecchiette, “little ears.” I will not ask to be a satellite dish. I do not expect I will hear well until join the great stew. Yet perhaps I may learn to listen, a drop at a time. I am tired of my voi greasy with grievances. Turn my face up like a tulip or a teacup, open to the psalter of other souls.

Make me pastina, stars who know their course and size. It takes hundreds to fill a tablespoon. They are a high-carbohydrate community of love. Butter turns them soft as porridge. They are sick-day food for children. They are the persistence of childhood after dark. They are comforter not comets. They heal without accolades. Make me reflect light without thought of merit or mirror. Salt me with crystals from the one who numbers the grains.

Form me into ditalini, that your hands may hollow my fear. My ego bloats like raw lamb. I swell because I am scared. Turn me into an aquifer open in both directions. I do not pray to be ziti, wide enough for seraphs to play. Make me ditalini, more kazoo than clarion. It will be enough if I can bear your flavor from one end to the other. Speak grace where I am open. Keep my flume swift. Let mercy land like herbs on the bewildered and the bare.

Lord, make me farfalle. Kiss my borders until they unfurl. May I widen my arms as one who waits for wings. Bubble me in your water until I remember I have been opened to enfold in embrace. Save me from staring at my reflection so long that the angel stops stirring. Make me farfalle, which sounds like laughter. Make me jaunty as a bow tie. Do not let me forget that I am as far-fetched as the long table with no empty chairs.

Angela Townsend works for a cat sanctuary, where she bears witness to mercy for all beings. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, seven-time Best of the Net nominee, and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review‘s 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Epiphany, Pleiades, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar, and her poet mother is her best friend.