The prayer I can’t quite pray yet
I keep meaning to say something to you, God.
Or maybe not to you.
Maybe at you.
But then I stop.
It catches somewhere in my chest.
It is not that I do not believe.
I do.
Probably too much.
It just hurts in ways I do not know what to do with.
If you are listening
and I keep hoping you are
you would hear all of it.
The sharpness in my voice.
The tiredness tucked in my bones.
That little stone in my coat pocket
I have carried since winter started.
It is smoothed down now
from my fingers rubbing it.
I do not want this to be prayer.
I want prayer to sound like afternoons when I was ten,
playing video games with the window open,
Tracey Chapman’s voice spilling from the stereo,
and Mum cleaning in the background,
the smell of dust and polish drifting into the room.
But this is all I have
bits of half sentences
silences that keep stretching
the weight of this stone in my pocket.
If you are there
and I guess you already know if you are
then you know
this is the best I can manage
today.
Scribbling Theology 