You are the sun the way I cannot look at you without my eyes beginning to water, without my face flushing.
And I wonder if I should thank my father for warning me of times like these, or curse him for creating this self-fulfilling prophecy
For creating such a foul and wretched creature
Undeserving creature
Perhaps I’m still that frightful child
Wearing boots far too big
Walking around looking for home
Wherever that is.
I can feel her clawing around in my ribcage sometimes. I can feel her fingers in the back of my throat as she tries to grip my tongue.
I drown her with a pulsating, dirty hatred until I can feel it leaking out of my ears
And I break open like a pomegranate.
I break firm skin with my thumbs, juice running down my fingers and arms
I can feel the seeds inside me grow brown and mushy
When God breaks me open each night
I wonder if he cares.
Is religion just hoping that eventually someone will find you good enough to eat?
Praying for someone to worship your mushy seeds?
Is it how love is supposed to feel? Is salvation found in the arms of my mother?
God created a being unfit to love. To be loved.
He placed an unwelcome stranger in my body. Watches as she learns to walk as I do, talk as I do. Become more me than I ever was. He lets me clip her wings every so often.
There were so many who came before me, and I can’t help but pray at least one ancestor is proud. That she may see herself in me. Someone wanted me once.
Is it too much to imagine someone reaches for me in the same insane, hungry way I desperately reach for them?
Is it strange to fear it?
God reveals things to me—
A woman sits on a park bench beside me, knee touching mine with a familiarity I cannot comprehend
“You are a creature made to yearn,” she says.
“Entirely empty, but so much smaller than you think. You pray for rain until it comes. You hide under an awning. Observe. You light another cigarette. It’s comfortable, isn’t it?”
I don’t ask her what this means. The pit in my stomach knows. What is a creature made to claw itself to death meant to say? What is there left?
God will watch as this wretched body rots.
rosary beads
page revision: 2, last edited: 16 Dec 2022 03:00