july 2024
sunday evening. we're chilling in front of our house after a full-night celebration of my birthday. warm summer night, england just lost to spain as i heard through the doors of our local bar, i'm flushing down meaty sweet cherries with a bright red watermelon monster energy. incredibly high and tired, bored of any other topic of conversation, from my k-hole to another's i'm shooting a question: "what is your relationship with god?". i know my answer and mostly want to talk about it but it's easier to bring it up as a question. people stumble through fried neurons and disparate associations coming up with barely coherent poetics.
"what is yours?". a fabric of reality, a connective tissue between subjects and events that erases the boundary between them.
later that night i throw up red.
december 2024
sober for 3 months. depressed, isolated, no meaning, no purpose.
cj the x in their essay "6 shapes of god" reminds me that god is what people gather around, connection between them, a point of worship besides ourselves. a meaning.
later that month i'm in highlands in a rented motorhome escaping new year parties and ex-friend's birthday in the darkness of the northern winter. among the books i brought with Christina Rossetti's poetry collection. i got it a couple years before, but felt too stupid to read poetry. now is the time. the book opens on "who shall deliver me?".
God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease, and rest, and joys:
Romans 7:24-25:
O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
i find myself reading about her, researching the requirements for joining a monastery, reading scripture. horses' video on exorcism and christian mysticism adds more fuel to a growing undefinable at the time feeling.
february 2025
in a campervan in france. writing on the topic of roots for a poetry contest leads me back to the imagery of fabric. i finally put it properly on paper solidifying this idea and shaping my interest in it.
you will always forget. you have to forget.
no being can survive the full view.
the gardeners of the cloth
cutting, mending, patching, stitching
day in, day out
you have to make a choice. then make another one.
trace back what you can. pin it for others.
behind every mark a movement.
behind every movement a mark.
the fabric shifts and folds and tears and seals.
move, feel the tension,
make a choice to unknowable consequences.
the fabric persists,
and so do its gardeners.
june 2025
cj the x comes to the uk with lectures. easily juggling philosophy, theology and a deep understanding of modern culture while being apologetically queer and non-binary. they tell how often people would credit them with allowing themselves to join a church, following through on that yearning, that pull from inside the solar plexus into a lived religious tradition while staying true to their queerness. it is allowed, it makes sense. god loves as all and wants us to live an authentic flavourful delicious life. there's no contradiction.
falling in all the lines, into all the places. following the thread, leaning towards, facing all the walls and all the corners.
the treasure is in the eye of the beholder.
unfolding formulated unexpressed. releasing. separating desire and pathology.
i do care and it’s good actually.
recognize impulses. let them play out. embrace the consequences.
september 2025
preparing to celebrate one year of sobriety. getting ready to come out as lesbian and non-binary. i still have never been to a church service. a two days before the sobriety dinner we go to a counter-protest against march for life. i see people holding "christ is king" banners shaking their rosaries at us for defending our right to reproductive healthcare. it scares me for a moment. i know that christianity is not that, but i'm scared to be seen as part of that. mortified.
next day. it's sunday. i wake up early. today is the day. i find a nearby church and go to a service. i am incredibly lucky. it was their patron saint day, St Mary's. the priest explicitly mentions palestine in prayers, pleading for peace and safety for all people.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
a communal lunch after. i am at the table with other young queer-looking people. too shy to speak, startled by their inviting kind attention. scared. but i keep coming back, sunday after sunday. the faces become familiar, become family. sundays become days of reflection, of coming back to what matters, to my truth. but i still mostly keep it to myself, talking around it when asked by friends and housemates, telling only the closest ones.
march 2026
everybody knows now. even my parents and the most atheistic friends. sometimes i see surprise on their face, sometimes curiosity but never disappointment.
i'm sitting in front of the house having the last cigarette of the day with my friend. he is honoured to be my sponsor at the baptism.
i am home.
