Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

1. Have you ever been in love? Circle your answer.(a) Yes(b) I can still smell her shampoo on my pillow© I can still taste her toothpaste in my mouth

2. Do you understand what you’ve done?(a) I said the only thing I promised I never would(b) She looked beautiful and I didn’t tell her© No

3. It’s been raining for three days and you see her at a bus stop three hours away from your house. If her bus comes at 8:34 and yours comes at 9:15 then you’ll both get to your homes by 10. If her bus comes at 9:15 and yours comes at 10:34 then why are you waiting for a bus in the rain?Please answer clearly, in full sentences. (Not a correct answer: I just wanted to see her one more time).

4. Define two (2):Love | The way the sun hits her hair at six in the morning | Beauty | The moment of silence after your heart shatters

5. True or False:i. You love her. ___ii. It was her fault. ___iii. If you were given a second chance, you’d kiss her in the rain the Sunday before it ended. ___iv. If you were given a second chance, you’d turn right and never meet her. ___v. You can’t regret a single moment that you had her. ___vi. It ended long before either of you said anything. ___

1. Breathe in. It’s just a question. You can do this.

“Yeah, I do.”

Perfect. They’re smiling now.

Something small inside of you feels guilty about lying by omission, so you keep going.
Here comes the hard part.

“I do believe in God, it’s just that - I don’t really go to church anymore.”

Their smile dims, just a little.
But why?! They cry out.
You used to go to church every Sunday when you were little! Someone else intercedes. 

Your nails are digging into your palm. Breathe in again, just this once.

“I know, but like, I didn’t really feel it after a while? I prefer to pray on my own.”

2. Things you remember from church:

i. The smell of incense that clung to your hair, even hours after mass.

ii. The sunlight, filtering in through the colored glass.

iii. HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN, I CAN’T BELIEVE GOD WOULD LET THOSE KIND OF PEOPLE GO UNPUNISHED, THEY DESERVE TO BURN IN HELL, whispered by a priest to your grandma. Your eyes water and you don’t know why.

iv. You can still recite some of the psalms by heart. 

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life; whom shall I dread?

v. Your aunt presses a rosary into your palm, one year before you swear to yourself you will never set foot in a church again. You don’t have the heart to tell her that it feels like she’s handing you a chain made of iron and lead and the weight of your guilt.

vi. Confession is always awkward and forced and you feel like your sins should be yours to deal with and yours alone, but they told you without it you’d be dirty and you believed them. You think about this when you kneel down in front of the crucifix. Jesus Christ’s eyes are closed. The small, ugly thing in your stomach is glad He is not looking at you.

3. There are roughly 52 Sundays in a year. You went to church every Sunday since you were a baby until you were 16. That makes it about 800 masses. 

You do the math in your head and it doesn’t feel like 800 hours, it feels like eternities of you standing in your best clothes, forced to listen to stories of fire and brimstone and God’s righteous anger against sinners.

Very rarely they talk about how God is also love and forgiveness. Those times, it feels like you walked into another service for a different religion.

4. You realize you’re “different” around the same time they make you realize they’ll never accept you for who you are.

It hurts more than you thought it would.

5. Your faith is a fragile, small, sleeping thing nested in your ribcage.

You poke and prod and worry at it, hoping you’ll get an answer to a question you’re too afraid to ask.

6. Your family loves you and your friends love you but if there’s really a higher being

7. who created the Universe as we know it

8. and loves us all, for we are His children

9. HOW DO YOU KNOW HE HATES ME FOR WHAT I THINK FOR WHO I LOVE FOR WHO I AM

10. God punishes sinners but he also forgives them.

It took you some time to realize there was nothing to forgive, nothing to end up in Hell for, except the usual stuff, ordinary sins like white lies and feeling envious of someone else’s possessions and other human things.

The first time you walk into a church after a while you do it with a weight on your shoulders you need to get rid of.

The pews are empty and the light hits the altar just right.

You breathe in. Close your eyes. 

I BELIEVE IN A GOD WHO LOVES ME, you scream in your head, and it’s loud enough to rattle Heaven.

The silence around you is calm and peaceful.

It’s exactly the answer you were looking for.

sext: people died for you.
I bet you liked it.

sext: they say Helen’s was the face
that launched a thousand ships
but she’s got nothing on you.

sext: good men took up arms and you
torched a city to the ground.

sext: But, oh, the roar of victory.
You must have been so proud.

Dear 15
When the car breaks down (again), you will reach deep into your pockets and offer up all of your measly life’s savings to fix it. Your mother will shake her head and you will not understand it. There is a lot you don’t understand, yet. And sometimes love comes in the shape of a “no” you are not equipped to accept. But 15 isn’t nearly so grown up at you think it is and the future is toddering toward you on shaky legs and it’s okay to be afraid of it. You don’t know who you are right now, but here are a couple hints: red meat makes your stomach hurt, pink is not the enemy, and girls are really, really pretty. And it’s okay if you want to kiss them.

Dear 13
Get a good look at this one—you’re going to remember him. The cherub face, the voice that rings louder than the one in your own throat; he is the worst thing that ever happened to you. But it will take four more years of being crushed into the margins of your own story to realize that. Right now, right now, he comes dressed as the answer to all of your prayers: looks like God right when you were starting to wonder if there was one. But, darling, if I could go back and keep you away from him, I wouldn’t. He is the atom bomb to your Nevada body and he mushroom-clouds everything that you think you know about yourself.
But he is also one of the only reasons you make it, at all. Broken things always grow back stronger, and now he’s a rumor of a boy with no home that wants him, and you are still standing. And you are stronger.

Dear 11
This is dangerous loving. You are too small, too soft. They are going to make mincemeat of you.

Dear 17
You took it too far—turned lonely into solitary confinement and apathy into a pissing contest. But the betrayals don’t hurt anymore so, hey, you did it. You let the ones who hurt you go. You let everything go. Your body is a steel wall, ninety degrees of unbending Empty. Your first kiss is a boy you hate; you are done leaving voicemails for a boy who might be dead, tomorrow;  they are not the same boy, but they might as well be. You will snowball all this Nothing into an avalanche.

Dear 19
Please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop. You can’t set fire to the hurting.

Now
11 wants to know what you did with your hair. 15 misses Dad and 19 doesn’t. None of us even recognize you and we can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad one but 13 is in love and 19 is kicking the shit out of her. And 15 is in love and 19 is setting her hair on fire and 17 says she doesn’t know what love means. 11 cried her eyes out yesterday and 17 didn’t do anything. How did you grow up on the backs of so many broken things? How strong can a bed of eggshells be? 15 is starving for affection—can’t remember the last time she was touched. 13 still has nightmares about the boy on the bus and the grin on his face and his hand down the front of her jeans and the way her heart felt like a chicken-wire fence caught in a hurricane. 13 didn’t get out of bed today. 17 sees the boy and hugs him instead of hitting him and feels sick for weeks but 19 is a survivor and she tells the rest of us to get the fuck over it.
What we mean is… are you happy? Because 19 made homes out of beds that she didn’t belong in and we just want 21 to make it.
Are you making it?

i once saw a scientist
on television.
and she was speaking generally
about science things
(being a scientist and knowing science things
etc.)
and, speaking generally
i am not a science
person,
and while i respect them,
i do not have much interest
in scientists
or science things.
so i went to switch the channel
at the precise moment that the presenter sitting beside the scientist asked:
what,
in your opinion,
is the most ASTOUNDING fact
about the universe
?
and this stopped me.
because it is not often that television presenters ask such interesting questions,
and the scientist was pursing her lips in a thoughtful way that made me think
i wanted to her her answer
to the interesting question.
after a pause,
she did not look directly at the
camera,
but directly at the presenter.

did you know,
she said,
that there are atoms in your body.
the presenter laughed.
of course,
he said.
what else would my body be made of?

well,
said the scientist,
and i did not need to look at the television screen to know
she was smiling.
do you know where those atoms came from?
well,
said the presenter.
and he did not say anything else.
i snickered from my place in the armchair
and the scientist smiled again.

the most ASTOUNDING fact that i have ever known,
she said,
is not a fact, specifically,
but the story of every atom on this planet.
the ones that make up the grass and the sea and the sand and the forests and the human
body.
these atoms came
from stars.

the presenter sat forward and so did i.

stars,
continued the scientist,
are mortal
like humans.
they die,
and, in their later years,
are unstable.
it pains me a little to say it, but a star’s death
is far more dramatic than a human’s.
is it? asked the presenter.
the scientist was looking at him still,
and i felt strongly as though i was listening in on a very private
conversation.

it is, the scientist nodded. the stars
i am referring to,
she said,
collapsed and exploded a very long time ago, and scattered their enriched guts across
the entire universe.
here, she paused, and her words caught in my mind in a way that made me wonder
if she was a scientist
or a poet.
their guts, she said whilst sipping from a glass of water, were splayed across every
inch
of time and space.
these guts were made of the
fundamental ingredients
of life and existence.
carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and all the
rest of it.
all in the bellies of these stars that flung themselves across the universe in protest when it was their time to die.

and then? asked the presenter.
the scientist’s lips quirked upwards. and then, she said.
it all became parts of gas clouds.
ones that condense and collapse and will form our next solar systems -
billions of stars with billions of planets to orbit them.
and these planets have the ingredients of life sewed into the very fabric
of their own lives.

so, she said, smile still playing on her lips -
where do your atoms come from?
from those gas clouds, said the presenter.
no, said the scientist.
from those stars.

every atom, every molecule, every inhale and exhale and beat of your heart, is traceable
to the crucibles that cooked life itself.
and you are sitting here and so am i and so are your viewers at home,
and we’re all in the universe, aren’t we?
yes, said the presenter.
but i’ll tell you what’s even better, the scientist smiled wider.
the universe is in us. your atoms and my atoms and your camera men’s atoms came from those stars. you’re connected and relevant without even having to try. you are made of stardust and the fabric of the universe.
that is the most ASTOUNDING fact
i can tell you.
the presenter smiled and the scientist smiled wider and i smiled too,

and later i switched the channel to something less scientific
and wondered if i should feel small,
tiny and insignificant in relation to the stars that collapsed and exploded and
threw themselves everywhere.
and that is how my mother found me,
sitting on the sofa.
and she asked me what was
wrong,
and i said,
nothing. i’m just a lot smaller than stars are.
my mother is very literal woman. as such, her natural response was:
of course you’re not. don’t you see how small stars are?
that’s only from a distance,
i said.
maybe you’re looking at yourself from a distance too, she said.

and she left the room and it is years later now, but i still
think about the scientist and what she said
and my mother and what she said
and i still see the presenter on television.
and i still think that the stars are very big
but now i think,
they are in me.
so i am big too.