if there is a God

After family, after love, after tearing himself apart, the narrator asks the only question left: Where was God in all of this?

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I wonder if God laughed as the church roof collapsed onto the choir singing hymns.

Maybe he tapped his fingers on the rafters, humming along until they cracked.

Maybe he watched the dust settle,

thought it looked like incense,

and called it beautiful.

I never believed in him.

Not really.

I tried once, when I was ten.

Knelt beside my bed, laced my fingers like I saw on TV,

mumbling borrowed words into the darkness of my room.

I thanked him for oranges because I didn’t know what else to say.

It felt stupid.

It felt empty.

Like reciting lines in a language I didn’t care to learn.

They said I had to have faith.

But faith in what?

In a god who watched me break and did nothing—

not out of malice,

but out of indifference?

That’s the part that makes me sick.

The apathy.

The idea that if he’s there, he saw it all—

the bruises, the slammed doors, the prayers I didn’t say—

and decided to stay quiet.

They say he gives people strength.

But I had to give that to myself.

They say he loves us.

But love doesn’t look like absence.

Love doesn’t look like drywall and static and boredom.

If there is a God,

he is either a sadist

or a coward.

And if there isn’t—

well.

That makes more sense anyway.