newborn saints (help me get closer to god)

The news reports tell me that the world is burning and everything is dying. Not that it

can be helped, they say. We’re all dying anyway. We can’t help that either. Of course

nothing ever blazes for long enough to burn the illusion of immortality away, to wean

the hunger, to keep our souls from rushing out from the comfort of isolation to

crimping ourselves very thin just so others could fit in, just to have someone to sit in

solitude beside, just so you won’t have to ride home alone. I walk like a somnambulist

blindly making my way through the world by touch alone, hands grappling for other

hands to cling into, any small comfort to get me through the next painful hours of

consciousness. We are all alone. We are all alone and yet somehow, we find each

other; warm creatures looking for another warm animal to love and fear for, to take

care of, to hold then let go.

We unfold each other as we fold within each other, finding new spaces to fit our

longing into with a child’s glee, perhaps even a child’s desperation. We learn the lines

of the Other’s body as we wrestle with our own. We learn this in verses, and at night I

whisper them to myself like a prayer to which no saint would ever answer to. I’ll still

teach them to you if you’ll allow me—even if God averts His lonely eye, even if the

saints choose to remain silent so as not to further incriminate themselves. I’ll still

teach them to you. After all, what’s another god to worship?

III

(Maybe God’s silence only means that the rules of martyrdom have changed and

saints are now baptized not in blood but through each other’s touch, each one like a

quiet benediction. Prayer becomes our native tongue, our common language. I am

holding you now. We’re two girls trying to navigate this burning world, navigating

ourselves, and that part might get erased in the process, that part might get swallowed

by History, but at least there’s no way this could possibly get lost in translation. Kiss

me, I say. Sorry if I’m being too direct.)

Is it too late for us? Perhaps. We can choose to love each other and stay gentle and the

world might still go on burning. The world might still eat us alive then spit us out

shredded and bloody and barely human. But we’ll still have the love. Yes, after all that

we’ll still have the love.