oh god, hold me now

— 'oh god where are you now?', sufjan stevens; part two

we’re back in the desert. i’m not sure how long we’ve been gone or if we even left at all. we being my god and i; still in the silence of this car, my god rests next to me. something inside of him needs me just as much as i desire him.

my lover hasn’t been around much. i’m trying to decide if that’s a good thing or not. maybe i hold all the weight in the relationship; i’m not sure though, i just know there’s a weight and it’s depending on me. (if this were another life, i could’ve been atlas)

a few days ago, we watched a thunderstorm darken and destroy our holy land. i hope that one day i am the one on the inside, and my god on the outside. i’d love to see him soaked by what falls down from the heavens. i think he’s trying to speak to me more often, but i don’t know if he’s struggling because i’m not listening or if he just doesn’t have the words. i’m not even sure what i want him to say to me, if i even have a choice. sometimes i just need to hear a voice and respond to it. i hope he tells me to drive because it’s getting hard again and the desert might not be sacred enough to heal me.

there’s a quote about abraham loving isaac from his ankle to his scalp. my god loves me from one edge of this desert to the other; which is another way of saying his love for me is as big as my pain. maybe all this despair will make my god wish he had that son after all. the son that would bring more peace and love than my body can even pretend to hold. although i don’t believe my god would find comfort in wounding someone that much no matter how much harm they could handle. rather, he finds comfort in the fact that only he and the desert contain all the rage that escapes my body. i wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what keeps him here in the car with me. (i like to believe he digs the graves because he wants to trap me with my own rage, so i stop running. it won’t be enough.) after all, aren’t gods the ones who love you despite the harm that you cause? his love for me so heavy that i have no place to set it down. perhaps, that’s the purpose: a love so heavy that you must carry it always. my god will forever remind me of his love.

have you ever witnessed a desert storm? despite the rushing of wind and sand, my attention is solely on the being in my passenger seat. there’s a rage in his eyes that’s almost like mine. but not quite because i’m not as godlike as i wish to believe. (are any of us? if you could be christlike, would you? forget the miracles of water to wine and flesh to bread. if this world’s sin rested on your tongue, would you devour it or spit it out?) there is no fear within me when my god is beside me, but my rage is something even he cannot erase. a storm in the desert, a storm inside me; i told you this air was magical. thankfully there’s someone next to me to witness it. what is my god if not the reciever of my rage? after all, he is big enough to hold all that is inside me.

i once asked if it would be easier if i called him by another name. i thought that if i called him by someone else’s name he’d absorb whatever made them holy. unfortunately, my god and holiness don’t work like that, there’s only so much he can consume.

several days ago, he spent 3 days alone, but he didn’t come back any different. at least not mentally, he came back with faint scars on his palms and arms like if he kept scratching they’d lead to his heart or brain. perhaps my god has something in him that he cannot scratch; i guess holiness doesn’t erase everything no matter how much we want it to. i wonder if the scars were meant to let something out or keep it in. what if my god and i have different wounds? maybe we’re both keeping them as a reminder; he reminds himself that some things stay, i’m reminding myself that sometimes they leave. ironically, i don’t want him to leave because i know being on my own will be worse. (does this mean i consider my god to be a wound?) i feel like a nail searching for a tender place on the skin seconds away from piercing, which is to say i’m constantly hungry even with a feast in front of me. (i’m a wound to my god as well.)

forty paces, in the opposite direction of the first grave, i get on my knees and clasp my hands. maybe i should ask for a sign or a verse from a book we’re both unfamiliar with, but i don’t believe any divine symbols or text could fix the mess in me. how do you ask the one who knows you best to fix something that feels impossible to find? he knows that i don’t require a higher being to shout or cry to, but maybe i need a church… the desert shouldn’t be my only place of worship. i ask for a church and get a laugh like thunder; churches involve symapthy, hymns, and noise. i’d be a fool to forget that silence is my god’s favorite sound.

what if i’m not the one who seeks a church? despite how i thrive off of his love, this rage in me feeds my god more than anything else ever could. we deliver parts of ourselves to one another like terribly wrapped presents, we aren’t gifts of the world. in fact, the world ripped us up and dropped us in the desert, then told us to figure it out. but our desert is too vast to search, the only thing worth saving here is death. in spite of this fact, it’s a relief to know i won’t be here forever, that i’ll never be cursed with an immortal blessing.

if i can’t receive a church, i’ll settle for a hug. oh god, come out into the rain and hold me now. don’t worry, this water won’t betray you and all this pain is mine.