Late night prayer (to the God of Transitions)
Late night tonight. Dark night tonight and I am going to wear my brightest smile. You won’t know that my burning heart is beating its way out of my chest. That my glowing eyes are searching for the exit signs. For that green flash of light that wants to swallow us all into the nothingness of an empty street away from the lights of this show, away from the startling noises, this relentless, disturbing, perfectly-timed cheer. This frightening, robotic, too cheerful-to-trust-in cheer. Tonight I will be the illusion, honey. In my red dress, I’ll dance away to the flow, I’ll steal this show just to steal one look from you. I’ll laugh until my mouth feels foreign, until your eyes are fixed on the curves of my body drawing the shape of infinity the wrong way round, upside down.
Upside down is how my world feels right now (but you are not meant to know). Upside down is how the world feels to me as I spin on this dance floor, upside down as I drag this red lipstick across my dry lips, as I switch off this button in my head that still buzzes red when the thought of you returns, that still buzzes red with the thought that I still need you. As my thoughts spin to this music, all I can think of is that all I can do is surrender. Surrender to the wounds, accepting that it’s the effort to get back to life too soon after our death that in end will kill us. I surrender. I surrender, I surrender this overflowing soul of mine to the God of Transitions. To this cruel, vulnerable, wounded god who inhabits the waves of the stormy sea, all the sharp, short, painful storms of our lives. As I stamp my feet, as I flick my hair from side to side, all I can feel is this urge for a church to hide in, a bed sheet to crawl under, a bench where I can hug my knees to my chest and let the pain flow through my veins from head to toe, from heart to eye ducts. As the pain hits my cheeks like salt water hits the shore, I’ll have only a few words to say. Oh god, just take my prayer, I’ll say, if only you’d take me in your arms and tell me it’s okay to cry sometimes, that it’s okay to be a wreck sometimes, it’s okay not to be okay.
That it’s okay to feel your knees weakening when the earth’s plates are shifting beneath you. That it’s okay to have wounds and to let them bleed sometimes.
That it’s okay to wear your brightest dress, your brightest smile, your brightest self and still burn inside. God of Transitions, if you can hear me, there’s hurt outside and there’s hurt inside. It’s raining cats and dogs out there but there’s no retreat inside tonight. God of Transitions, if you can hear me, there’s still darkness in the light, there’s still light in the darkness. And maybe that’s what I need to hear.
Rational Artist 