Hole In The Ground

Is this your god? Look at the screen

I woke us both up laughing in my sleep. I asked you if I’d said anything and you said yes but what it was you wouldn’t tell me. And I felt myself afraid and I didn’t press you. I never do. I steal all the blankets and then you do. I wake up and fall asleep and remember everything that happens in between. I tell you over breakfast I don’t trust my memory. We are drinking coffee. We are eating something fancy. It has microgreens and some sort of maple glaze and it is served to us on stoneware, and the server is polite but not kind which is how you know it is going to be pricey. We are talking and talking and talking and in between we take bites and chew and swallow, so I forget that I am supposed to be considering the quality.

We drive to the shrine and get out of the car, you park near a Prius with a vanity plate that I read out loud, “Taoist.” I say something after like, “I find that interesting,” As we enter, we are laughing. We walk the path, past white stone statues of Saints that I don’t know the name of. I ask why isn’t there a plaque with some kind of description, “Why don’t they want to tell me what it means?” You say that’s not the Catholic way but I’m the one who’s baptized and so I feel a bit fake and partly ashamed for what I’m saying. And momentarily I ponder that Catholic guilt you’re always noticing in me. 

We continue walking until we come before the Sorrowful Mother surrounded by bouquets of daisies. Cheap flowers for such an important lady. There are candles burning on either side of us, I say something like a joke and then notice you are crying. “Oh, don’t cry,” then something like, “I know sorrow, I know her, I am the mother,” I’m pointing. She is a stone altar stuck inside a cliff, she is there at the center of a dozen rows of benches that are empty. We are here because I wanted to come, and it looks how I imagined but it feels differently. 

I do not feel holy. I feel like being funny, or making some kind of mockery. The whole place is making me uneasy. We stand back and sun peeks over the cliff, illuminating the trees but not touching Mary. A Filipino family asks if I can take their photo, and I do, the three of them in front of the shrine with hands clasped in front of themselves, not smiling. The little boy is wearing a fluorescent orange shirt and nikes. I pass the phone back to them and watch them turn to pray. 

In the gift shop we scan the list of saints and try to pick one out for me. Patron Saint of Paratroopers. Patron Saint of Rape. Patron Saint of Starving. Of arms dealers and chimney sweeps and cabinet makers and of everything. I pick them up and put them down and try to figure out what it is I need. 

“I don’t feel connected to any of these,” I’m turning through the prayer cards, looking for a sign that I will be delivered from the feelings I have been avoiding. I want to lock eyes with one of the illustrations, love at first sight, like the couples in the movies. 

I want a Patron Saint of Never Lonely. I want a Patron Saint of Do You Think I’m Pretty? Patron Saint, perhaps, of Being Totally and Completely Free. Patron Saint of Something Felt and Known but Never Seen. 

I am worried that I can’t compete. That somebody is always better than me. I am worried about being wrong and being incomplete. 

I am worried, too, that I will never be full and that nobody’s love will be enough for me. I am worried I will always be hungry. 

Everything is not how I imagined, and I tell you that I’m psychic but I have been wrong about everything I claim to have seen. We drive outside of town and walk around in this spot you know where god might be. There is a garden snake on the path, wriggling between the leaves. It is god, it has to be. It’s something, I think, or I want it to be.

You ask what makes a place holy. You kiss me at the Mind Mirage Meditation Seat. I ask you why your mouth tastes minty, and you spit out a white pouch of nicotine. It makes me angry, for a moment, but really it’s just that I am remembering a story about the man last year who I fucked when I was feeling desperate and ugly. 

I want to be the sort of girl who makes you feel like I am looking up at you from below you, on my knees. Like your hands are the hands of the god that I have spent so many years inventing. 

I have known that feeling. I’ve known love, in the form of giving up control completely. In the form of giving somebody the choice and them giving it back to me. In the form of surgery, getting rid of things to make room for what the other person needs. And how it felt to be the kind of woman who would do anything. It wasn’t how I’d pictured it. It might be a false memory.

I think about that Fleabag monologue the one that everybody has already seen twice or three times on their laptop in between unwashed depression sheets. How it felt so good to hear her say out loud “I want somebody to tell me…” and to see her survive the feeling. 

You asked me when I woke us up, “Are you laughing or crying?” “Laughing, but I can’t remember what’s so funny.” When I got up in the morning, I forgot for a moment if it was a memory or a dream. The lines are all becoming blurry, what I want and what I need. What exists already and what I am hoping to see. It’s all false and real and imaginary. The ideal and the reality. All that I can be for you, what I have been and what I’m becoming. It’s all out of my control, it’s the little bits of god in everything asking me to turn and pray to stones and snakes and you and me in bed and drinking coffee. 

Before she leaves for Florida, Maddy says she doesn’t understand what kind of god it is that I believe in. I shrug and say, “I’m still discovering it,” Looking for signs inside the eyes of laminated cards and silver charms and inside men and inside me. 

A version of god inside a picture frame, across from my bed. With one hand outstretched, pressing my nose to all the things I’ve ever said without really believing them. I don’t mind, I forgive you, I’m sorry, you’re right, I don’t expect anything from you. 

Patron Saint of How Focusing On All The Wrong Fucking Things Will Ruin You. Patron Saint of I know what I said before, I’m still angry, I still miss you, I think we need to talk soon. I am getting ready to be brand new, I’m going Clear like how the scientologists do. I am adopting a new language, hot and convulsing on the floor trying to tell the truth. I will stop looking in the mirror, give up drugs and give up sin, I’ll beg somebody I don’t know for the forgiveness I have always wanted.