Her & her

I Am Not Comfortable Here

Every time I step foot in a church it is an identity crisis

Because I am only now, after 2 decades and one year, learning who I might be

And I cannot decide whether to destroy or dislike this person I am so proudly becoming

I have never been gilded walls or soaring cathedrals with packed seats and raised voices and glorious notes from the beloved organ

I have never been wooden pews with straight backs or polished stone floors that reflect your sins back at you like those mirrors you only ever find at carnivals

I have never been tearful prayers to a god who has never introduced himself

I have always been grass between your toes as you play tag with strangers and the smell in the air after lightning hits twice

I have always been crumbling fortresses with forgotten folk songs whispered on the breath of the wind as she plays with the hem of your shirt and the burn in your throat after your first shot of whiskey two years too early

I have always been the sting of tears when you see someone your heart beats for, the way your hands fist at the back of their neck during that first embrace in years

I have always been the somber of a graveyard, where even the headstones have forgotten their names

I am bright beginnings and quiet endings

I am not a destination, but every footstep in between

I am not static, I never have been

And churches, churches are a fixed moment in time that I have never belonged to, will never belong to, can never belong to

While I am in motion, tumbling across the skies like asteroids or across the fields like brambles, down mountains tall as skyscrapers and down ant hills even beetles can step over

The church was, is, always will be a point on the horizon

Always there

Always there

Always there

But something I cannot reach no matter how hard I try

Because even if I spread wings and fly

I will not meet the horizon

I will only find it has dissolved into a 360 degree view beneath me in another attempt to avoid my searching fingers and desperate heart

Always out of reach

Always unknowable

Always absent

I have changed my childhood prayer from

Dear God, and Jesus, in Heaven

to

Dear Everything Good in the Universe

Because I am not sure I still believe in God

Because I am not sure a man named jesus ever walked the earth, ever turned water into wine, ever died for me

-because why would he die for someone he despises-

For this mess of sins that I am

-someone who listens to rainbow boys and cries because they cannot understand this monster god has placed inside of them-

I may still believe in the inherent goodness of all that exists but I do not understand the names you give it

God and jesus and holy spirit

The names jump off my tongue the way I wanted to plunge from the water tower next to 5 Below at fifteen

Back when you despised me for the demons I had no control over

And when I have finally leashed them

You despise me still

So no, I am not comfortable here

How could I be when you have only ever treated me as a monster?