I was four, the first time I met God. He stood waiting in my reflection, a smile on his face. Young and old, mysterious and bold, I like to think his rainbow grin meant he approved of the splashes my booties made.
I met her a second time, five years later. Dad was in the hospital - a car accident. His clock stopped ticking.
God kissed his brow and took him by the hand, and I just knew she did the same for everyone. My old man - who was too young in hindsight - went with a smile, comforted despite his discontent.
I didn't see God again until I was thirty. My eldest dropped her backpack on the kitchen table, and the thud of it woke her brother from his noontime nap. In the glimmering tears they bore, I saw an apology. It was sorrowful, and I was rightly confused.
Then came The Car Accident. She had decades unlived.
The cosmic irony failed to escape my grief. Enraged, I screamed at God. Swore I'd **** them if I could. Begged for answers until my lips turned blue.
None came. Time passed: I collected more scars, recovered in fits and bursts that hurt as much as they healed. I grew old.
Lying beside unstoked coals, limbs paper-thin, I smiled at God as they gave me their hand.
You see, over the lifetime my daughter never got to be, I had come to learn a thing or two. Like the scent of forgotten fruit, and the many flavours of success and failure. So, the curve of my lip was honest when God kissed my brow and apologized for their limitations.
"Omnipotence is a sham," a secret I already knew.
What parent would surrender their child to hurt, had they a choice otherwise?
I laughed, and they joined in.
I kissed their cheek, freed them from sin.
Salt on my lips, I spoke forgiveness.
Funny, being a child at eighty.
This is the poem's original form, and one which better illustrates my preferred idea of God. Yes, I remain some mixture of Atheistic and Agnostic. Yet, this thought persists. Mostly because the common conceptualizations of 'God' remain deeply unsatisfying.
