I thought I was a good Christian: forehead slathered in holy water before I could even speak
is what mom told me in the car when she said she’d pray for me. Always standing on
my lamb-legs in the pews singing praise, always early for Sunday school, never did
coke or anything like that, never spoke up either. Faith may have been a bird’s
cage, the poison promise of salvation dangling, just out of reach above my
tongue—but it was all I knew. I was what they wanted until
I wasn’t, was God-fearing & Christ-mirroring until I wasn’t.
One quiet July night—save for the rumbling awake of engines—I stopped at
the 7/11 just on the corner with a twenty in hand & a liver working overtime.
It was a full, pale moon, self-fashioned destruction; two heavy hands on my shoulders,
& no turning back. I had no sense of direction, was only following the
distorted stretch of pavement to the nearest sign of human life.
The teen behind the counter mouthed to me something I won’t
remember & under the artificial light, my skull buzzed restlessly like the chatter
of a wasp’s nest. But still, reality did not feel synthetic enough for me to bother.
I let him keep the change for a bag of chips. The door bell chimed as I entered the night’s hands. Then
realisation smacked me sharp & blistering when I saw him sitting on the curb.
Sixteen, self-proclaimed agnostic & I saw (really) Jesus outside the 7/11 in shredded
sandals smoking silently & looking at me like I knew him. That briar crown
was unmistakeable. He offered me a smoke & I refused (though no longer Lord-following, I
kept my teachings: I sill refuse to take a fag in my mouth).
Night sky of burns down both bronze arms & two eyes all-consuming. I
might’ve called him handsome if I wasn’t seeing fuzz. I asked to hear
his story. His father always entered the house smelling of bad decisions
& eventually he stopped coming home all together. He said, steady, the sins of his father
became his to shoulder. I thought I understood; like mortal men, even
the Lord chastened his own son with his absence & said he did it in the
name of love.
I told him my father left before I could remember, & so the Lord became a
replacement. That was until I was kicked down onto the concrete, split open
smooth by a grown man’s blade, the most brittle paper or tenderest slab of meat.
Had me nailed underneath the wide open heavens, self-assured that no punishment
would be hand delivered to him. So in the private corner of my mind, where I thought
no one would be listening, I declared that either God didn’t exist or chose to stop answering.
He said he was sorry, I said the same. In the somber, earthly scene he exhaled
thick curls of nicotine with his eyes closed, like some sacred ritual. I did not
find the small, generous corner of the Earth I wished for, but the collective catharsis
was still welcome. We stood there for a numb minute, listening to the perfect, primal
quiet in our skulls. He said he would pray for me. I thanked him & said my farewell.
I walked back into the mouth of the night. I pat my back pockets; phone, wallet, keys, &
another shape unfamiliar. In my palms then was a single cigarette, with the words:
goddamn us all. I wondered how Job did it. I wondered if I would walk into traffic tonight &
end up compressed into the front page of the Sunday newspaper. Under a single
white street lamp, I offered a drunken prayer just for insurance.