My mother asked me once again

If I believed in God.

And I said it was “complicated”–

a word too small for something so big.

So when I tried to press on some words

like stickers that had lost their tack 

On my beliefs, partially disgraced

a chalkboard already partially erased

She, in place of me, called it faith

And I took the label

and called it chance instead of fate

That I had weaned on stories of priests–

monks, more like.

And I constructed temples out of legos, marbles, magnets

the clutter a child hoarded

because they weren’t marble or stone.

And my mother asked me “God?”

Because it was the biggest word out there.

But I didn’t know its volume

Until I reached fifth grade.

By then I had worn out the tales of my namesake

he that trickster god

A monkey made out of stone

By then I traveled the world

a hundred hours

a thousand shelves

a million tales

By then I bared my teeth like those “savage” deities.

I liked their smiles

and all their amity.

For they were cruel at times

nonsensical with the same reasoning

But they were constant

and their abodes were always safe stories

Yet when I opened up these covers,

Searching for those similar faces,

And combed my hands through the pages,

Looking for a dear friend,

I found God—

an uncanny face with no eyes but all vision.

His Sight knew me

And I saw him back

beheld Him, a terror

with no mouth but a relentless hunger

And His language wasn’t so much as words

as the buzzing in the background.

Because when God started to speak

In this book adapted for a child,

His whispers rose to a torrent;

He breathed

He sighed

And

He smiled.

And what he did he do to me

that I didn’t already know he would?

For his crimes, his punishment

reverbrated through my neighborhood.

His words seep into his believers

(my aunt; her cousin, his spouse, their parents)

though I’d always ask why

Why love a God with so much hate;

Why love the Divine Fright?

For I too learned Christianity,

Each psalm, each prayer.

And His tales coated me in only His words

Cocooned me layer by layer

I professed, I confessed

Though my wrongs were rightly justified

Because he would scrape my innards out

Had I done otherwise

And when I had listened

To Him, in curiosity,

He became my Pandora’s box.

And he told me

Each word I already knew

“All Men are damned.

So are you.”

And his religion is salvation,

But what can be saved?

Out of me, a kid,

And a thousand gods’ names?

I wasn’t a scholar

But I didn’t need to be to know.

That just as I knew God’s words

I knew the bloodshed he sowed.

For the deities around warned me

Of a conquest, an inquisition

A subjugation, a tyranny

A family lost, a child taken

A re-education, an indoctrination

And when He damned some more

I could no longer ignore His chime, His toll

He scorned me

“You’re faithless, not faithful”

And my religion was suddenly just “faith”

more than half a decade later

Because if I believed it, and only I,

What made it real? 

Yet, a filial piety to my “faith”,

I believed

more than this God.

And I made myself a fool

to keep my stories

Because nightmares are tall tales

and God is a warning. 

So I live in perdition,

counting down the days,

And I wonder:

Could I undo what He did?

All men are damned,

I more so, to believe that,

Because God will not save me.

God–

Do I Believe That?