August 21, 2024 - “wrest.” by Linda Dolan

it’s that i tell god: fine.

you stay over there. you sit on that couch.

i’ll sit in this chair. don’t leave.

don’t talk to me.

that i say: anyway, i don’t buy it.

i don’t buy that you couldn’t’ve done so much better

if you made the whole world. i think it’s a shitty plan.

i say: fine. so it’s a shitty plan. and the whole world sucks.

at least i have our heart disease too, at least i’m not the only

one without it, at least you have some messed-up sense of justice.

and: i know my pain is only one small pain

amongst all the great big pains happening everywhere

all the time to all such precious people.

— which is exactly the problem: all such precious people.

and: i’ve been asking you to do something for a really long time.

and: don’t talk to me.

just so you can ask me to do more shit for you.

my whole life taking care of sick people.

and: i do not want to write

what i can only write because he’s dead.

i do not want to live

where i can only live because he’s dead.

i won’t say this is in any way okay.

it’s like how chris and i get in a fight and we fight all week

and then he wakes up at seven a.m. on the morning of our party

and cleans the apartment and vacuums the floors and greets the guests

and i’m glad, thankful, grateful. but that doesn’t mean i wasn’t alone.

so thanks, god, for grad school, the apartment, a nearby yoga studio.

but i don’t need a partner just to vacuum my floors.

i don’t need a god just to vacuum my floors.

also: why doesn’t anyone see that being grateful makes it worse?

i want to be mad and say that god left us. i’d rather he leave us

than treat us like this. i’d rather he just be asleep.