“Have you found God, Wendy?”
Yes. In the back of a camper van in 2009 with a hillbilly and a crack pipe, I think.
I don’t tell him that.
“No.”
“Do you know where God is?” he asks. Simultaneous in His expectation and rhetoric.
Not here.
I pause.
“No.” Again.
He smiles priestly.
“He’s right here.” Arms spread wide, like two metal chairs in an empty room could ever count as worship.
I smile belatedly. Unsure whether I’m allowed to even tick my foot, for He might hate it.
“Father,” I said, though he’s not, “have you found God?”
He chuckles this time and looks at me like a child, because I am, in His eyes. He waits a moment, almost as to pour his thoughts telepathically to me- though I thought he could only do that with God?
Time stretches too far for my comfort so I smile to reduce the bubbling anxiety of being in His presence.
“I have, my child.” he says finally, and I think.
I think who’s child?
Still intensely nervous and trying my God-damn hardest (sorry) not to twitch, I smile.
I want to laugh in his face and call him a liar. A cheat. A psycho in black. I want to tug on his collar and watch the white cassock fall off and then I want to point at it and watch him stare and I want to say:
“See? You’re just like me.”
Instead, I smile.
He hasn’t, I think. He is still searching like me.
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