Dear God

by Rudangshru Sengupta

Dear God,
You who built the clock
and chewed it down to splinters —
was it love or hunger
that made you laugh while I splintered?

He found me naked in the field.
Said I was sacred.
Unbuttoned the sky
and pressed his mouth to my ribs
like prayer.

He said, This is how a star is born:
first, you hollow.
Then, you hum.
I believed him.
There was a ship.
There was an altar.
There was the sound of skin peeling like citrus.
I offered my neck like a lamb.
He carved time into me with his teeth.
They pulse like tiny clocks under my skin.

Now, the clocks blink static.
The week bleeds hours.
Tuesday is gone.

Once, I looked into a mirror
I coughed up the blade he left in my lungs.
He said, I left you in the truth.
Then he slit his throat.

My love was never metaphor.
It was plague.
It was wilderness.
He fed me fruit from his mouth.
He left like a rupture.
Not a Rapture —
just silence that rang too loud to live with.

Every night, I scream his name into the sink
until my gums bleed and the drain clogs with teeth.
I hope this is worship.

Gabriel came, once.
Crashed through glass with his wing in his mouth, choking,
said God had gone missing
and no one’s allowed to cry in heaven.

I built a church of mirrors.
I sit inside it,
waiting for light to do something holy.
Beam me back the fuck up, I’m begging.

Dear God,
if you won't bring him back,
then make me something terrible.
A black hole.
A warhead.
A myth.
Let me swallow time
the way he swallowed me.

Amen.