I deem it a cruel twist of my existence to encounter so often a flinted paradox too exquisitely tuned to my softness to be random.
What kind of omnipotence imparts a deep peace to be in a house made of wood, and then horror to see a tree “felled,” crashing through neighbor arms?
Or the plants in my house, verdant emissaries of a lush ancestral home, symbol of my ache to co-inhabit. But then they die, trapped in small tombs, roots cruelly blocked from the great subterranean stores, exposed to the vagaries of my whims and guilty keyword searches as their leaves droop, crisp, drop, and I know it’s my fault.
And that’s just one kingdom – we both know it gets worse from here.
I find it the more benign, the more charitable creed to attest there is no god. Because if there is one, this intelligence designed that we must kill to live, and yet created the bowl inside me, filled with such desperate grief at the life snuffing out of anything.
That’s the kind of god who, when he shows up with his entourage at the restaurant, his mouth a wide gesture of brazen disdain, scattering the meek from his sweeping stride, I stand up from my plate, and though shaking, push my glass back, and walk stiffly out with my friends, still so hungry, pausing for the paparazzi bulbs to flash and crack over my defiant, damned, desolate face.
