savior

he came in a dream asking if jesus is my savior like the night we wandered crown heights & he tried to rip the words from my throat, like the night we wandered crown heights & he told me he’d wear me down until i became a sister wife, like the day in the bushwick apartment when he smirked at my fury. it’s so easy to know you don’t fit. it’s so hard to extricate. so much simpler to self annihilate. you still won’t fit. but at least your corpse is buried six feet under & their piss can’t seep through that much soil. how many times, how many ways can i tell you i’m tired? my words will never be enough. playing dress up in my closet doesn’t afford him the ability to hear my pulse in his ears. no excuse, i can’t say i did much better. i keep pulling the lovers card, but we both shrouded ourselves in lies & secrets. his a weapon. mine a shield. all my middle school bullies were my closest friends. & still, i’m on better terms with them than the others. i’ve always been gifted at forgiving. never understood the point of the confessional, of the middle man, of needing your god to be human or your human to be god. you still paid your taxes even if you didn’t file. i only know how to love on my knees, the holdover of genuflection & kneelers. i’m still praying. still worshipping. still carrying a broken & re-glued candlestick to the altar like my first holy communion. i don’t remember how to be in community, in union. jesus melts on my mother’s tongue & he played hillsong til i disowned my ears as if the same four chords & empty honor would make me melt on his. if you still believe any of us are saved, you must never open your blinds. if you still believe your own superiority, you never really opened your mind. know-it-all, tattle tale, crybaby — you wield your inferiority like a canon. i’ve said it before & i’ll say it again because repetition calms my mind, you made me fodder. foolish & pinocchio but i’m the only one who has a conscience here, for better & for worse. you’ve never even known remorse, never made amends, never apologized in sincerity or corrected your behavior. just throwing tantrums & bleeding out wine pretending you are the direct line to christ, but you just did too many lines & think your connection to the stars makes you omnipotent. the voices in your head don’t make you more correct. the tofu doesn’t raise you up, amplify your place in the life cycle. hatred & isolation aren’t a style. it’s proof you’ve no power over the constellations because they knew who you were all along, they whispered it to me while i chanted “star light, star bright.” now i wish may burns you alive, might even draft a crucifix in your image. iconography. phrenology. numerology. i’m-sorry-ology. forgive-me-ology. can-no-longer-wait-around-for-you-to-mean-your-apology. skin blue or black, or black & blue, the gods do not care more about you. not anointed. not saved. not even protected. doesn’t matter how many untruths you spread, how many times you cheat, how many gallons you’ve bled. your whole identity is “my mommy doesn’t love me.” but she did & does but you give no grace, while saying you’re saved, you’re shiva, your destruction all for truth, but you wouldn’t know verity if it unfurled your cheeks & entered you like i do. well, did. once upon a time. a fairytale by brothers grimm, laden in sour, regurgitated sin. envelopes, again & again. i can’t keep writing about this. but it’s all i have. i’m trying to learn to take full breaths again. how to friendship. how to not cower at even the slightest tonal shift. how to drift. how to not hate my body for taking up space. how to stop treating my life as a race. undoing the belief of having learned my place. i am body & nothing more, i wrote it til it was engraved, encased. as if being a vessel would keep the tender bits safe. but bodies hold the memories, they tally up the debt, & with every trespass, they tighten the net. try shifting the energy, transform & translate. echoes, projections, deep breath, & create. time is slowing but still rushing far too quickly. even the air is poison, turning us all sickly. i am no atheist, i just don’t believe in you any longer. can no longer conjure up your flavor, make any sort of sense of your behavior. you come in dreams, but you’re not my savior.