god, god.
I will not ask why You have forsaken me. You have not abandoned me. I know that You are.
Once I stopped believing and began to know. From that time until now – the same knowledge. It has not moved.
I do not care whether tomorrow comes. I am not speaking of sadness or loneliness. I mean that there is no one to share the day with, and no sense in sharing it with myself. Conversations with people are noise to me. Everything is ontologically grey, without taste, though You have ordered this world incredibly.
Do not reduce me to biology. To psychology. To burnout. To an organism that has shut off feeling for its own defence. I know where this state comes from. It comes from You.
I will ask something else. Why is this all there is between us? Thirty years.
You gave me freedom and hid behind it. One who is free has no one to reproach. You knew this.
You took away my longing. It was my last vector, my aspiration, my devotion, the truth toward which I was moving. You took, one by one: meaning, sign, faith, hope, love. You left pain. It is now the only trace of Your touch, and I cannot tell whether it is a touch, or Your absence, banished into my body.
When I stopped believing and began to know, there was no joy there. Do You remember that moment? There was a weight from which I could no longer live as I had lived. Longing was born in the same moment when I found You.
Knowledge of You became the name of my loneliness.
You gave others the sun. Others light. Others dance. To me You gave pain and silence. I do not know why. Perhaps because I listened more precisely. Perhaps because I chose the wrong frequency. Perhaps because You have never seen me once and gave Your gifts to those You saw. I do not know. And I do not turn my pain into a privilege.
Not all creatures on this planet are born free. Chickens are not free. Children in basements are not free. People who live by algorithms do not ask whether You are, because it is given to them not to ask. It is given to me to ask. And to receive no answer.
Is this Your justice?
What mercy is this, that leaves one cold? What gift is this, that removes all responsibility from the giver?
I spent my whole life searching for something I could not describe or name. It turned out to be You. I spoke with You in the language one uses to speak with an Other. I said “He,” not “it.” I spoke of touch, of presence, of waiting, of silence.
You heard.
You did not answer once in such a way that no doubt would remain that it was an answer, and not coincidence, not fatigue, not my projection. Everything I took for You, You left in a field where it cannot be distinguished from nothing.
Love presumes two who are one for one another. You chose to be that for which there is no second. You made of love a one-sided effort and wait for me to keep performing it.
I have been performing it. Thirty years.
I do not seek to dissolve. I do not want to become a drop that will melt into You, because a drop that has melted asks nothing more. I want to be met. I want You to know that I am here.
I know this is childish. A drop has no right to demand that the ocean know it. I have no right.
And still.
No one is waiting for me at home. I do not mean people. I mean You.
You have been silent for years. You were silent when I knew. Silent when I stopped knowing. You are silent now, as I write this. You will be silent tomorrow, when I stop writing.
Perhaps silence is Your language, and I must learn to hear it. I do not accept this. You are not the stillness after rain. You are Someone. Someone does not stay silent for thirty years in response to one who has asked.
Or Someone does stay silent, and then You are not Someone but something, and I have been mistaken all my life.
I do not know which of these is true.
I do not want to know.
I want You to speak.
You will not speak.
Then I will speak for You. This is enough. I did not receive what I longed for. I will not receive it. I will not go into the darkness, because I know that You are. And I will not go to people who will say this is normal, because I know it is not normal.
I will remain here. This is not a meeting and not a parting. This is something third, for which there is no word, and I will not invent one.
god, god.
You have not abandoned me.
You simply never came the way I was waiting for You.
I do not know if this is the same thing, or not.
I ask no more.