Vassar Miller can write some really depressing stuff, but it's so real and seems so honest that I'm really drawn to her work.


Bedtime Prayer
By Vassar Miller

Thank you for Holy Communion this morning,
although it was the ritual I enjoy most—
the bowing at the right time, the crossing myself at the right place,
missing no trick—
like a child with a new toy.
Thank You that I could visit my sick friend, Frances,
though she was such a bore that I felt rather good about it
till my feeling of goodness gave me a feeling of badness
and I was tossed to and fro on the pinpricks of pride and shame
like the Christian martyrs on the Roman spears
(but they at least knew whose martyrs they were, while I wasn't sure).
Thank You, too, that the masks are fixed back
on the face of my love and on mine,
although for a moment we had burst through them
as from the webs of a spider.
Naked and frightened our faces stared at each other,
ugly with sticky membrane still clinging about them.
But soon we spun them once more as though we were breathing them out.
Finally, thank You, O Lord, that I, am so sleepy.
I thank You for this without reservation,
my need urging my gratitude, my gratitude urging my need,
ready to sink into sleep as a drowning man into water,
in whom, as both actor and audience,
his role is the real.