This post is courtesy of a friend of the magazine. We are formally opening for submissions on June 30.
GOD sits with me
in the confessional.
“FORGIVE ME, DAUGHTER,
FOR I HAVE SINNED.”
He murmurs.
His throat is full of thunder.
It makes my bones
ache.
He tells me every evil:
The first murder.
The first theft.
The first time anything thought of something.
That time you ate the last cookie in the house.
Every teenage boy who relates to Holden Caulfield.
A mother dying in the street with her starving child.
The last drop of water.
He tells me
the meaning of the universe,
and how much he regrets it.
We are quiet.
Every second of silence
feels like a cold raindrop.
I feel the numbness of burning fire
deep in my lungs.
It threatens to whisper out my nose,
to mix in with the air I breathe back.
I look at him, stained glass
through tearful brightness.
My father turns to me.
“DO YOU FORGIVE ME?”
He whispers.
I leave GOD alone in the confessional.
