you pray a lot when it happens.

you aren't religious, no, but you're thinking about it. you pray to whatever you think will listen at the time.

you pray to god. sometimes you pray to god and all his angels and you hope they're listening, to you, you useless speck on this earth. you pray for salvation you know isn't coming.

you pray to no one. you pray, you spit scripture into nothing, you want everything to be nothing. you want it to be torn to pieces. you want the world, in all its minuscule blue, to be swallowed by the universe.

you pray to yourself. that if you could be more pious, if you were a true priest of yourself, maybe it wouldn't happen anymore. you should have seen the signs. you knew what was at the end of the road. you did it again.

you want to plaster religious iconography all over your brain. you want something at the end of it all to let you know that it was worth it. you want to be safe.

religion is given to you in the form of a 9 mm parabellum. you believe in nothing, and you believe in everything. if you can say it pretty enough, one day, it will save you. you want the rapture, you want to be safe.  you barely know what safe looks like for you anymore, not when safe has been a thin sheet pulled over a corpse your whole life.

you want someone to tell you that you've been suffering. you want them to lift the thorn crown from your head and take the cross off you. you don't want to be told it's okay. you want to be told that it's fucked. you want everyone to know that it hurts. that it hurts so bad that sometimes it feels like your skin is being lifted from your body, that you can't breathe under it all.