the walls of hospitals hear more prayers than the walls of churches
and it is this that tells me that prayer is not about god
but prayer is about sadness

and sadness is a sin

sadness is a sin
because i saw it in the face of my sister
6 levels on the coma scale, powdered nose, and pipes in her wrists she answered when asked about her drug habits
“when i was twelve my dad left home
and since then i felt i never really had a parent”
and how they replied that perhaps her baby daughter was going to be taken away within the week;
2 weeks old
and without a father.

sadness is a sin
because i heard it from the mouth of the cop who took my sixteen year old boy away
a knife buried 4 inches into in his thigh
from emotional abuse and torment, he was
asked to portray resentment for the public display
and his mother, the culprit and also the victim of psychological discontent
was given a sympathetic nod and he
was given a bandage
which of course relieved every ounce of pain in them both
as she drove him back home in silence, both bleary eyed in the desperate quiet
to where the knives were

sadness is a sin
because i touched it in my mother
as my fingers traced the scar on her forearm where she’d been
smashed through a glass door by a man who wanted her soul
and didn’t know how to get to it,
who was taught the best way into something you can’t open
is to destroy it whole.
i heard it in the way she couldn’t pronounce “****”
and in the way she couldn’t pronounce his name
and the way that she recalled the lawyer’s response as
“how short was your skirt?”
not “how sharp are your weapons?”

sadness is a sin
and i know this because when i entered the doctors asking for a mental health check
for my post-traumatic stress
they told me i was in for a skin inspection, on my thighs, where i’d taken out
dissociative pain and the unease of watching a woman i love tear herself apart in front of me
from a crippling addiction.
and like her, the tension much like an elastic band causes me to spring back together with blood on my hands
and i explain
“it is my own blood, i am not starting a war, i just want to be happy”
but the doctor sees a **** and he is repulsed
and like an eye he won’t look at it until i make it prettier for him
and then he leaves me behind in the room
like many others in the past
to put my clothes back on;
as if it were nothing to close a door.

sadness is a sin
because people are afraid of that which they cannot understand
or fix
and so the prayers on the walls of hospital wards
aren’t asking for god at all
they’re asking for temporary forgiveness for a sin they didn’t mean to commit
one of ignorance
and indulgence
and for the fleeting amount of time wasted in between when someone is
living
and when someone is dying.
it is rejected, vilified, untended to because you can’t touch it, you can’t point at it and say
“i want this gone”
so, prodding at material signs of weakness and calling it the problem we’ve covered up the fact that
much more work needs to be done
though we’re running out of tools, and worse, we don’t know what tool we needed to start with
we’re panicked to the point where
darkness is reduced to a lack of light.
because an addict is not on a high
and **** is not provoked
one is not without home from desire of discomfort
and the razor is not the enemy;
but the darkness is.
the hole.
and you’re filling it, too,
you’ve just been too busy weeping by the side of death beds
and living bodies, eating too many pastries and watching too much television
humming quietly to yourself to fill the silence
and too busy preying
to Gods you’ve never seen
to realise it
yet