Supplication of a Sometime Believer
Thursday, 20 April 2023
| Jordan Rastrick
God, give me doubt
Doubt, to pierce my too small image of you
To overcome the certainties with which I would fence you
To remember that my knowledge of you can't outpace my love for you
To let go of the half-truths that had defined us
To let go of you as I had once known you
God, give me faith
Faith, to be drawn to something on the other side of doubt
To seek you when there is no trace of you
To love you when there is no love in me
To cry out in despair to you
In despair of you
To dwell with the broken pieces of how I had imagined you
To scream and rage and weep at the absence of you
The distortions and mutations of you
Let the obscenities and curses and imperfections
Drip out of me, uselessly
God, give me awe
Awe of you and all your works
That I might fall flat on the ground before it
Give it to me
In a leaf
In a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam
In a book of ideas
In a smile, for an instant
Give me awe
That my heart might be shattered
That my image of you
Might be just one iota bigger
Than it had been
Jordan Rastrick is a software engineer and occasionally a poet. He lives in Erskineville with a flatmate and a shy cat. He writes at write.as/lying-sleeping-gods/.
Image credit: ‘Hold Out Till The Last Light’ by Billy Pasco on Unsplash.