LUNGFUL

*CONTENT WARNING: Domestic violence / Suicide

The very first time I recall praying

was after witnessing my uncle throttle one of his girlfriends.

I can never remember her name.

I can never remember the reason why.

She had a son, I know,

around the same age as me and my sister.

She had dark, frizzy hair, I know,

and a skinny neck.

In repentance for his violence, he gathered us together

in the kitchen and prayed for forgiveness.

This was how I found God,

in a circle that small.

I don’t remember the last time I prayed,

maybe for my mother’s body

whose conditions I can’t list, too several;

or my father’s permanence,

that his garden is no longer uprooted.

Maybe it was at a stoplight or in the streets at night.

Maybe during orgasm or with a gun to my temple.

Disillusion can happen so slowly,

a wound that disguises its own severity.

Not a broken vertebrae, but a slow deprivation of air.

That is how I let God go,

One lungful at a time.