spacious echoing halls for when the children’s choir sings. golden lanterns with engraved names hanging from the ceiling. Each brick on the wall has the name of a family written on it. It’s a massive room but it feels so small when you step inside.
The human storytelling tradition’s crown jewel, the world's biggest book club. beautiful spires adorned with the symbol of the cross.
time stops in this room
for a few hours everything and everyone is holy and magic permeates the air and flares the senses of everyone in the congregation. a surge of energy blossoms and wells up until it envelops everyone and even the most devout atheist holds in her breath…
i know i shouldn't but i do. i see them laughing with their friends from group or holding hands with their family. i feel the razors burrowing into my skin. i want to be them, be with them, be like them. it’s not their fault they take it for granted. it’s hard not to when you’ve lived with something being a given your entire life.
God says God is good, that in him there is no darkness at all. God tells the world to watch over the young, care for the sick, love your neighbor. God says a lot of things – i never listened much in church. He beckons me like a siren. every step closer i take the choir crescendos. i sit in the pews among the congregation and God points at me. He reaches out to me with both arms and holds me close,
then sucker punches me over and over until i cant walk or think and my jaw is filled with blood and my teeth chip away and then he kisses me on the cheek. “you’ve always had too much blood anyway” he whispers to me. i smell cigarettes on his breath and i want to die in that moment i want to be anywhere else. that is not god to them but that is god to me.
i said i want to believe in god, but that is not true. i want to go to church. but i can’t believe in a god. and if i cant give them that im better off staying right here