Dear God, I cried this morning while I read the book
of Genesis. It says you created the heavens
and the earth, that you put lights in the sky
to divide day from night and to give light to the earth.
I tried to talk to you afterwards,
knees curled beneath me, as I wept into my
charcoal gray blanket, but the words would not
come out. Only the sorrow. The loneliness. The agony
that made my stomach cramp to contain,
in vain, the moan escaping from my lips.
There were too many people around me. The Book
says you looked upon the day and the night
and you called it good. My night, my God,
is not good. No day separates it. My night
began seventeen years ago when
I became a killer:
a Moses; a David; a Cain.
They had families and spoke to you face-to-face.
They ruled your people and performed miracles
and wrote poetry and
being one of the many should be enough,
but it’s not. I am not satisfied with the absence of love
and of passion. The type that shakes the foundations
of the earth and echoes into the distant future. Nor
am I satisfied with life behind the wire. I cry because I look
at the sun and despite its brightness, its light
does not penetrate my circumstances. On the sixth
day you created man in your image. Thousands of years
later you created me to love and to have and to laugh.
Except, I do none of these. I exist in night, in darkness,
waiting for your light to shine. I wait
for the good. Your son, Gus.