The first thing I feel is guilt. 

The crowded mouth, the filmy fingers, 

the dark stains across my shirt. 

Too much grease, too much salt. 

I think of Lot’s wife 

forever turning. I imagine my arteries 

also hardening. 

As the white -coated prophet warns 

of other things to come, 

curtly instructs Eat more fish, 

I can’t help but think of Friday dinners 

with salmon and Catholic Mom, 

the prayer we’d say for our health. 

I can’t help but picture 

the Fisher of Men. Disciples around him, 

fish atop coals, a full net 

in the awaiting boat. 

He waves me over, and I cross the sand. 

Though it’s been forever 

since I’ve been to Mass, though I need 

no miracle (just exercise, 

a better diet), I bow and reach 

out for his hands, each 

open to me, dark like mine. 

Forgive me, cure me.

Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University. A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize in 2023, for which his debut chapbook, This is My Body, was published in 2025.

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