i think i'm jesus?

i don’t believe i deserve anything good.
still, it arrives — soft, almost apologetic.
 unannounced.
and in those brief moments when the world stills — when the noise recedes — i feel it.
 not joy. not exactly. something quieter. light passing through leaves. water drawing lines across the roof. the sound of your voice, not near, but present. my father’s eyes. my mother’s voice in mine. a body that forgets, briefly, its own heaviness.
my hands tremble. yours don’t. yours make them still.
 i look in the mirror. i do not know the person there.
i think i’ve seen god, but not in the places we’re told to look.
 he lives in the overlooked — the small hills, the dirty windows, the accidental silence.
 i’ve met him there, asked my own demon for forgiveness.
good things come.
i do not think they are meant for me.

i know this isn’t much of a poem. it could be rewritten. restructured. made into something better, more disciplined, more sure of itself. but then it wouldn’t be mine. and this — whatever this is — isn’t about poetry anyway.

this is about worth.

not as an idea, but as a suspicion.
not "do people deserve good things," but: do i?

it’s an ugly question.
you aren’t supposed to ask it out loud.
but there it is.

do i deserve kindness? rest? a soft bed? the warmth of someone’s hand reaching for mine in a dark room?

sometimes, when something good happens — a laugh, a moment of stillness, the way the sky looks right before the sun goes — i flinch.
as if the world has miscalculated and i’m about to be corrected.

you could say i’m wrong.
that i am worthy, that i should stop carrying the guilt.
but i wouldn’t believe you.
because if the guilt goes, what was the pain for?

this is the story i’ve told myself:
bad things happen because i deserve them.
that’s the rule.
that’s what makes sense.

when something good arrives, it throws everything out of order.

sometimes, i catch up — just briefly — from the last thing. the last mistake, the last spiral. my chest unclenches. my shoulders drop. i sleep a few hours without waking up in the thick of my own thoughts.

but the peace doesn’t hold.
it never does.
the next failure shows up, right on time.

maybe i’m still here out of stubbornness. maybe i’m just waiting to prove a point.
to god, or the universe, or myself.

maybe i’m saying:
“i am the worst of your creations. the most selfish, the most small. and if you still love me, if i can still wake up and see light through the window — then maybe this world isn’t completely broken.”

and maybe — and this is the part that scares me — maybe that means i’m not.

did i just make myself jesus?

probably.
but then again, hasn’t everyone?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

zugzwang: filler friend syndrome

it wasn’t really about the fight. not in the way people like to believe. it was about the aftermath. about the story that could be told in its wake. about how it could be framed, about how the roles could be assigned. i think they fought not to resolve anything but to create something to point to. something that would make the silence that followed seem earned. something that would allow them to say, later, that they had tried. there is a certain kind of comfort in that narrative. the one where you are the person who stayed, who cared, who suffered. it grants you a kind of moral clarity. it gives shape to the ending. and maybe, somewhere in all of this, that was the point. not the relationship itself, but the exit. not the care, but the record of it. sometimes i think i was never really part of the story at all. just a fixture in the background. something vaguely human to react against. a prop. a foil. i’ve gone over it more times than i can count. the silences, the arguments, the late...
Read more

terms and conditions apply: the human experience

i walk with fear. not of spaces themselves, but of the people who move through them. the ones who make a sport of presence, who treat eye contact like contract, who regard silence as an invitation. it’s not their company that unsettles me, exactly. it’s the insistence. the persistence. the expectation that i be a participant. the assumption that i want to be reached. sometimes i think the word for it is misanthropy . other times i think it’s something smaller, more granular. like static, or grit. lately it feels more like repulsion than fear, more like weariness than dread. not agoraphobia. not quite. more like the sensation of being scraped raw by endless exchange. the too-loud greetings. the empty words. the demand to smile, to respond, to play along. what i want is quiet. what i want is the space not to perform. people ask how i’m doing. they do this without meaning it. the expectation is not truth. the expectation is rhythm. you say i’m fine , they say good to hear it , and the mac...
Read more

too heavy to hold

being pretty is not what they tell you it will be. no one tells you how slippery it is. how strange. how it follows you like a shadow you can’t claim. you catch it by accident in the window of a store, in the way someone looks at you too long. you see yourself suddenly, not as you feel, but as someone else might. and it startles you. because there’s a difference. a distance, really. between the person in your head and the one in the mirror. the one who hesitates, who bites her nails down to the quick. the one who gets it wrong. and then the other one, the one they call pretty. it’s a word that doesn’t fit, but it sticks anyway. it shows up in the pause, in the smile, in the way people want you close. there’s a kind of power in it. yes. things open. people soften. you don’t always have to explain yourself. but the power is borrowed. thin. and it doesn’t last. because it isn’t about you. it’s about what they see. what they want. it’s never been about who you are. and who are you? no...
Read more