absolution

Aanika,





i know a girl who writes poems a bout a god who stopped believing in her. he stopped believing in me too.

--

monday.


i hate him for making mondays the colour of hospital wards and faded linoleum. for the look on my father's face and the trust in my little brother's eyes. they are all i have. they are small and fragile and i am strong. i picked them up when she left and drew crayon rings around them so that they would never fall the way comets do. i am their sun and he is ripping me apart from the inside out. i am radioactive and soon i will explode and turn everything i love into a permanent cancer. it is his fault.

--

tuesday.


i met a boy. he is fifteen and trying to fly. he told me that miracles can happen and i want so badly to believe him, but i can see the terminal look in his eyes. his family comes and brings him prayers and love and hope. he asks them to pray for me and i beg him to stop. they tell me that the lord is all forgiving, that everything happens for a reason. i want them to hold me and be my strength, but instead i tell them that i am gay. the doctors apologized as they moved him from my ward.

--

wednesday.

my brother came today. he is only twelve and already he knows what it means to lose everything. he has green eyes and soft hands and an unwavering trust in my abilities. he crawled between my sheets and asked me if i was going to be okay and all i could do was hold him tightly. and oh god, i'm going to miss his warmth. i write my mother a letter and tell her that i hate her almost as much as the god that she professes to worship. i ask her how she left her seven year old son and her eleven year only daughter alone in a dank hotel room. i ask her why cheap liquor and cheap men were more important than us. but mostly i just want her to come back and sing to him like she used to.

--

thursday.

six months, or so they tell me.

--

friday.

my doctor cam today. he is nice. he has kind eyes and two children and a smile that drips pity from the corners. he tells me that there is hope. that with treatment i could live for five years. i ask him if he could watch his children die for five years. he holds my hand while i cry and tells me that i don't always have to be strong. i think he knows that he is wrong.

--

saturday.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent famine and war and death so that we might know that he is almighty and uncaring. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent fear and heartache to tear away our hope and force poetry between our teeth. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:9-11).

--

sunday.

i wrote a letter to a girl i don't know. to someone who writes poetry with torn heart strings and summer leaves and knows what it's like to be broken and lost and barely breathing.

i hope she hears me.





sincerly,
steph.