if you take requests rn, a fallen angel that wishes to be close to god again?
you sit in the last pew, as near to the door as you can manage, just in case. at any moment, the pipes of the organ could contort into unplayable shapes, the pulpit could catch fire, or the hymnal books could transform into frogs: signs from heaven declaring you are not meant to be here. you keep a white-knuckle grip on your bible.
the pastor says, we are all small beings striving for a greater light.
when you shook his hand before the start of service, those last remnants of grace echoing in you understood that he broke his nose four times in bar fights before he decided to put down the bottle and take up the cloth, that he and his wife shared their first kiss under a peach tree ten summers ago, that he will die at sixty five in a car crash, his body a tangle of torn muscles and blood. it is like this every time you touch someone.
the pastor says, we are all trying to make a moving whole out of our fractured pieces.
you look not at your knees, but at the church’s stained glass windows. closest to you: their image of jesus laying his hand upon a dying man. back when you had wings of lightning and a voice that made moonflowers bloom, you and three other angels watched as jesus bit into an apple and spat one of his milk teeth into the grass. you remember how he had run to mary on his unsteady young legs with apple juice all over his dark hands, shouting, mama, look at my mouth!
the pastor says, there is not one of us in here who god does not want to hold close.
in heaven, you sang for centuries on end, heralding the births of a hundred thousand galaxies. but that was before. when you return to your apartment this afternoon, you will put on a large pot of coffee and sing in all the empty rooms knowing that you no longer have to power to perform miracles like shifting tectonic plates or curing your neighbor’s arthritis. you will sing in your new voice, the sound of it as fragile as a thrush learning to take flight, and you will sing to god asking for every shred of redemption you’re allowed to have.
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