We Don’t Know the Same Jesus

We Don’t Know the Same Jesus

By Caitie Young

you were sitting across from me and said your mom would make you write bible verses when you fucked up because writing them would help you not fuck up anymore, and you thought there was something wicked in you when you couldn’t stop fucking up. 

in pitch-black darkness, a man stole something from you, and no one went with you to the hospital, but your mother found the morning after pill sitting on your nightstand and ranted about losing your virginity before marriage and damned you to hell. 

at eleven p.m we walked back to your apartment and you confessed you had been seeing a woman. your body was a stutter, shaking like i might yell, or write my feelings on a picket sign marked in bold red profanities, like i wouldn’t love you anymore. 

there was a time not long ago when you sunk into yourself like a bruise on a peach; you felt the world stop turning and the love stop coming; you were alone and you thought a lot about how death might be the only way to do anything right again. 

there is too much pain to fit in this poem, so we don’t believe in god anymore, but maybe jesus is proof healing takes longer than three days and leaves permanent scars where our bodies hold sin and secrets; did they ever tell you he wasn’t american, or white, or immortal? did they see his tears when he wept?