PRAY FOR THE SINNERS TOO

Meg Farrell

Churches never served me sanctuary from the storms. Not then. Not when countless cases of fraudulent aid tried to tell me that in the Holy Divine, I would find my healing. And certainly not now.
            Too many eyes scorch deep into my tissue. Each blink a message to run. Run home, run anywhere. So why in my desperation to feel my legs pull me out of that chair, did I find a paralytic reality? Was it the carved eyes adding to those of my miscellaneous captors? The ones searing from that damn cross? Can’t be. The fear of His wrath never scared me. Perhaps it was the empty space on my opposite. That one empty seat that weighed heavier than the rest of us collectively. Once again, it appears I am the only one to notice the absence. A typical pattern painted so horrendously perfectly on our own tapestry. History is cursed to repeat, after all.
            Two deaths. No lessons learnt. The dominoes will continue to fall.
            Deep breaths. Everyone around you is the root cause of the sun’s implosion. I don’t miss the irony; our own Armageddon beneath the rippling oak beams that groan with an irritation, that I assume is aimed at our sinful presence in His house. That’s the torturous beauty of this circumlocution. According to the invite, pointedly addressed to ‘Moo’, we’re here to listen. If they meant to each other, hardly likely.
            ‘Who are we waiting for?’ a cautious voice attached to the man on the left of the vacant chair spoke. Shocker. Ever the ice breaker is our pretty boy. A scoff followed. No one here surprises me anymore.
            In the building I refused to step into some twenty-five years ago, his hand on my arm has never felt tighter. I blink my vision to focus through tears on the faded ink detailing a dragonfly above those hateful white lines etched into my arm. Words of apologies catch under the lump in my throat.
            ‘Actually, I think he’s the one who’s been waiting for this the longest, my lips part instinctively, as my eyes sink into the void.