I’m Done Making A Religion Out Of You

There was a time when I couldn’t imagine myself waking up on a Sunday morning to anyone but you.

Sundays are supposed to be sacred. Full of belief and worship, not always of God, but of clean sheets and sunshine pouring through open windows. Religion has never claimed me. But I swear I found God in the static on your radio, between Van Morrison and Johnny Cash. I saw answers to prayers written along the Detroit skyline; I saw miracles in each glowing speck that made up the Downtown lights. I found inspiration in the holy graffiti spread like wildfire across canvases of broken buildings that are never asking to be fixed. I had faith that not once, would I ever have to question any of this.

You felt like my savior, and I worshiped you with this pen. Notebooks full of sermons from a bible written in our own language of rust and rain. My heart was a target, a cathedral of phantom words I never got the chance to speak in to existence in the validation of your presence, to which this world insisted on throwing its stones. I found solace in the Sundays when you felt like home.

Andrea Gibson once said that our knees are our prayer beds, but I remember the day we ate pizza while sitting in the bed of your truck. I remember how each greasy triangle looked like the holy trinity touching your lips. I remember praying to never forget the way the August sun cast spells against your skin. I remember the way you looked at me, and feeling as if I had finally reached absolution.

But, what I mistook for love, was just a heart full of holy illusion; Sunday morning light playing tricks on my eyes. Everything I held sacred, and thought I could believe in, turned out to be a lie.

Now, I’m constructing a chapel of letters I never found the courage to send. I’m striking match after match, and in these flames I have found someone new to believe in. I burn so much brighter with him than those Detroit city lights ever did. The white noise has been replaced by actual music. These glass panes in my chest are made shatterproof with his encouragement of my own honesty. The beauty of this new religion is that this time, I’m not just a follower. He has also made a religion out of me. This time, I’m believing in something that doesn’t just exist in my head.

So Baby, you can keep your Sundays.

Because now,

I’m worshipping on Tuesdays instead.