my pain is biblical, sacred. my pain is cain with the blood of his own heart staining his hands, the ripped cavity of his brother drenching the both of them in their father’s good wine. my pain is but a daughter’s, this is men’s work, my pain is first-born of this union and first-generational, and where else but my brow am i to bear it? my pain is a good prayer, how you search for it on your knees, am i mary of nazarene or the mary sat at the able worship of a dead man? my pain seeks God out, crushes his Hand beneath the church pew when my own give out halfway to the cash bucket, when i look for answers in the lace of my skirts and instead find nickels tinkering like bells. a woman stops to kiss my feet, a man clutches fistfuls of my contempt and smears it red across my temples, my pain is faith and it is lonely all at once. i give a sermon on wednesday, i say that i write so much about religion because i am terrified to forget it. the mothers understand me, hold my guilt between their hands like they are offering it to mortal ruin. the fathers never hear me, they wish the pain was easier to digest. i attend the funeral for a girl who i only met twice, her mother asks me to dress the part and i pay my respects in the sound of bangles i found atop her daughter’s dresser jingling against dripping wrists. i don’t write a eulogy or an instagram caption; when the procession starts, her barely grown blood bears the body like Christ against a cross. i almost drop my hand; its almost humorous, the image of its omniscience. i guess we leave this life exactly how we begin it, with our brother’s pitted knuckles clutching the fabrics of our funeral wear together.
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