I began questioning God on a Tuesday in 3rd grade
as we cut thick, black-brown planarian in half
with a scalpel that made my fingers twitch.
 
“It doesn’t feel pain,”
but I wonder if it screamed.
 
---
 
My mother shakes and closes her eyes,
palms up with strings of tension running the length of her arms.
 
A heavy breath dropped from lips,
rage,
nicotine streaming through engorged veins.
Tears lace her wet eyelashes like a net
and she looks up.
 
We stand in church beside my father
and I reach out to touch her,
to see if she is real.
 
---
 
I stare at the list
the College Board offers
for religious belief.
 
Maybe I’m a spiritualist,
an aesthetic Catholic,
a Santayana without the thick Spanish accent.
 
But my trachea encloses,
holes burned from brimstone
and I swallow,
checking UNDECIDED instead.
 
---
 
Heaven seems too sterile
for a woman like my mother.
 
Valhalla,
with its dark evergreens and glowing cinders,
more fit for such a fighter.
 
---
 
The man tells me, through thick glasses clouding his corneas,
that religion stimulates that same part of the brain
that drugs and sex and music do.
 
I don’t argue, I don’t agree.
 
---
 
She cries with little girl tears,
shouting to the “I Am” that lives in our attic.
 
Yellowed with age, her eyes search the cracks in the ceiling
for answers,
as I place a pillow over my head and scream,
blocking her out.
 
God is too tired to create a burning bush for my mother.
 
---
 
One hot night, I have a dream about
the land of the Israelites.
 
Cascading dunes of fossilized finger bones, folded in prayer,
trees relinquishing leaves of brittle parchment
to a sleepy wind,
heaving from countless tired lungs,
 
the Holy Spirit,
a large grey duck sitting atop a throne,
pretending to be a dove.
 
---
 
My little sister lays on a dirty blanket
and wonders what life will be like when we die.
 
I ask if she remembers the time before she was born,
as if the question is the answer,
and our eyes well in unison.
 
---
 
To whatever God there is:
 
You saved my mother from a hell that burned
in between her ears,
 
I’m not sure if I should thank you.
 
---
 
I reach out to pull a single white thread
from the infamous veil
in front of my face,
and it unravels completely.
 
---
 
From across the lake we stare,
watching her heavy ashes sink to the bottom,
and I dare you to say that there is something
bigger than us.