God Punishes Me Daily

God is in every person, every breathing creature, every stone that cannot weep. I search for God in the eyes of men who look through me. I grope for God in the hands of women turned away from me. At night, I press my cheek against cold tile and beg the floor to become holy ground.

To be human is to be damned to feeling. This heart pounds like a trapped bird against my ribs. It is a frantic, filthy thing I cannot control. I would tear it from my chest if I could. To be human is to hunger, and God help me, I hunger. I hunger for home like a child who never knew a mother's lullaby. I hunger for hands that won't turn to fists. I hunger for a life forgiving to my humanity. The hunger is a live wire. It burns when you realize no prayer will ever fill the hollow where comfort should live.

My knees know the pattern of this floor better than my own face. I stain it with my desperate prayers. I pray until my throat bleeds salt and iron. Preachers sell Him in many names, each version is brighter, simpler and cleaner than the last. They promise He lives in their tidy parables. Then why do I only find Him in the taste of my own blood when I bite my tongue?

Suffering is the only sacrament I know. Every wound has consecrated me, every betrayal has anointed me. I have become the knife sharpened on the whetstone of Your silence. I bare teeth at kindness. I flinch from gentle touch. You have forged me into both wound and weapon. I have become a blade that cuts the hands that try to heal. God, you have made me unholy.

This hunger of a girl lives in my spine. Forgive me, mother. Forgive me, father. I have been devoured from within. Some days I don't recognize this body wearing my skin. Once consumed a worshipper cannot be consumed by another, and when God left me for dead my rage consumed me.