Concerning the Prayer

  Kevin glanced around nervously, making sure he wouldn’t be overheard. “Being God, you should know who I am, so we can forgo the formalities,” he began. His own voice startled him. Damned that he should analyze it now but he felt too plaintive. This was his moment after all. “So you also know what I currently think about you. So. Here’s your chance. Here’s your big moment to change my mind. Go on. I’m open.”
  His eyes dropped to the floor. Silence was reverent without his contribution. “But you never speak, do you. That’s the problem, isn’t it? That you refuse to move a hand in this world, stop all this shit you set in motion? Catch the falling sparrow. You start knocking humanity like Dominos and then you aren’t supposed to be responsible for what your name gets applied to. And I’m supposed to accept that just because you know when the sparrow falls? Where’s the sense in that?
  “Ivy says we’re here to be interconnected. That we require it. So where does that leave me? Did you think of that before you started this? Or are some of us just decided the chamber pot from the start? Is that the question-- is it that you don’t really give a shit, or some of us are just the freaking rejects so you can grade on the curve? Some of us you can slap around, and that’s okay because you’re God and you can do that. Your ineffable plan.”
  His vision was starting to waver with ambivalent tears, struggling to keep them in, struggling to let it out, the desperation to plow ahead stronger than any addictive hunger he had ever felt. Not caring who heard him now – the world had faded away but for a scarred boy and an alabaster representation of a broken, dolorous God.
  “Our needs and wants may not amount to much in your cosmic worldview but they weren't so much to ask for from this end. At least a simple explanation of Why? Why the hell you kept me alive for THIS?! Huh?”
  He raised his eyes to look Christ in his, and a saline film revealed a detail he hadn’t noticed: Christ’s ribs were showing. And not simply that, the artist had sculpted his icon with flesh draped like ragged belts, shorn away and oozing. It was graphic, almost sacrilegious in a church. And Kevin realized his hand was reaching to the scars on his own back.