Before Mom got sick, Sundays always taught me to Be still and know that I am God. I tried to look my best when asking the sanctuary’s chandeliers for forgiveness. Six feet deep and seven months later, I got my first job changing oil and on Sundays I would work double shifts to pay for my sins, and I’d roll them up and smoke them and they made me Be still, and know that I was God.
Now I’m a ghost wallowing throughout this city’s shell, haunting streets and raising hell—I’m broke like a wallet and nervous like first days, but I am adapting to the side effects of motion sickness, the way my stomach overthrows my mind and liberates my insides—defying gravity, flowing upstream through my esophagus, they bellow out like cigarette smoke or the sounds of my vocal chords. And slowly I’m forgiving myself for being still for all the things that don’t exist: I’ve found a strange heaven in staying ceaseless.