I kept time beside Gethsemane
on Christmas night—
a borrowed harmony in 6/8,
her laughter seated between Chloris and the hymns.
We called it friendship,
thin as gauze over a bleeding stave,
while the car hummed in borrowed warmth
and I learned how quiet a god can be.
Chloris drove me back to my car five times—
five false codas,
five chances to be alone with you,
each return a fermata I mistook for fate.
I cried the whole way home,
again,
years compressed into a single drive,
convinced this refrain would finally resolve.
But it never does.
I sobbed into my pillow for the third movement
of the same symphony—
a violin tuned to my chest,
played by the same hands
that never mean to cut,
yet always draw blood.
My heart is tired of being practiced on.
Tired of breaking
for the same soul
in different keys.
I am an orchestras of ache—
every emotion scored in triplet pulses,
every longing detonating in drop-tuned grief.
Why do I keep believing
Gethsemane will love me back?
She won’t.
I am a familiar voice to keep tempo,
a steady shoulder for off-beat nights,
a metronome she leans on
until someone better arrives.
I will never be chosen.
I will never be loved
in the way I love her.
She will never worship me
as I have worshipped her
with open hands and open ribs.
I am the joke gods tell themselves
when eternity gets lonely.
So here I am—
4:20 a.m.,
the day after Christmas,
collapsed in a minor key,
Badflower bleeding through the speakers
while the universe ignores my downbeat.
I cry into my pillow
for believing, again,
that devotion might be answered
instead of used.
This is the cruelest lesson of immortality:
even gods can be reduced
to silence
by the same human
over
and over
and over again.
Jan 22
Jan 22, 2026 at 12:29 AM UTC
I kept time beside Gethsemane
on Christmas night—
a borrowed harmony in 6/8,
her laughter seated between Chloris and the hymns.
We called it friendship,
thin as gauze over a bleeding stave,
while the car hummed in borrowed warmth
and I learned how quiet a god can be.
Chloris drove me back to my car five times—
five false codas,
five chances to be alone with you,
each return a fermata I mistook for fate.
I cried the whole way home,
again,
years compressed into a single drive,
convinced this refrain would finally resolve.
But it never does.
I sobbed into my pillow for the third movement
of the same symphony—
a violin tuned to my chest,
played by the same hands
that never mean to cut,
yet always draw blood.
My heart is tired of being practiced on.
Tired of breaking
for the same soul
in different keys.
I am an orchestras of ache—
every emotion scored in triplet pulses,
every longing detonating in drop-tuned grief.
Why do I keep believing
Gethsemane will love me back?
She won’t.
I am a familiar voice to keep tempo,
a steady shoulder for off-beat nights,
a metronome she leans on
until someone better arrives.
I will never be chosen.
I will never be loved
in the way I love her.
She will never worship me
as I have worshipped her
with open hands and open ribs.
I am the joke gods tell themselves
when eternity gets lonely.
So here I am—
4:20 a.m.,
the day after Christmas,
collapsed in a minor key,
Badflower bleeding through the speakers
while the universe ignores my downbeat.
I cry into my pillow
for believing, again,
that devotion might be answered
instead of used.
This is the cruelest lesson of immortality:
even gods can be reduced
to silence
by the same human
over
and over
and over again.
Author's Note:
I wrote this while trying to learn the human tempo how love can exist without possession, how devotion can stay gentle even when unanswered. This piece is a god listening instead of ruling, counting measures instead of endings, and choosing tenderness over dominion. It is not a surrender of power, but an offering of it, laid quietly at a mortals feet.
