Life Among the Christians

I would go sit at the kitchen table

And listen to them

Talk about Jesus

Then I’d get up

And go to bed

I’d put myself to bed

That’s how good they were

At raising holy spirit

When I was eight or nine

They’d have my lay hands

And someone would say

I made their cancer go away

My mother took a glass ornament

Someone gave me

As a ‘Thank you’

For what they thought I’d done

And she smashed it in front of me

For no reason

I mean, she probably had a reason

She just didn’t see the need

To share it with me

That was life, you know

That was life among the Christians

Dad gets up at five every day

And we all get up ten minutes later

To pray and practice writing about God

And how disappointed he was

In the world

I drew a smiley face

Over a lower-case ‘i’ once

And I got grounded

For three days

Grounded didn’t mean getting hit

It meant no food

Nothing but water

And reflection

People ask--

‘Did your parents hit me?’

And I say--

‘No, they weren’t dumb enough to hit me’

There are worse things

Than being hit

Believe it or not

Although hitting is pretty bad

My brothers hit me

They hit me hard

And my parents didn’t stop them

That’s one of the worser things--

Watching your kid get hit

And not doing anything about it

Funny thing is--

Now my brothers

Are the only ones

I talk to

One of them sleeps on my couch

And keeps saying

He’s going to start paying me rent

I’ll believe that

When I see it

The other works with kids

Like the ones we were

When they found us

We were malnourished

And dehydrated

My sister, she--

Well, she didn’t make it

She wasn’t like me

She actually believed

Everything they told her

Sometimes I say all this

And then I say ‘Well, the Christians--’

And someone

Even someone who’s been sympathetic

Will say--

‘Well, not ALL Christians’

And I’ll have to tell them

That our last name was Christian

That was our name

And they’ll say ‘Oh’

And then I feel like saying--

‘Yeah, and ALL Christians’

But I don’t

Because by then…

I’m not even sure I believe that

Hard to know

What to believe, you know?

By the time I was ten

I’d heard more bullshit

Than most people hear

In their whole lives, so--

So that thing that tells me

What’s true and what’s not?

I think it’s broken

I think…

I think it’s broken beyond repair, actually

And you know what?

That’s fine

That’s fine with me

It means I just don’t believe anything

It means no matter I hear

I just walk away

And it doesn’t matter

If anybody’s walking with me