“The God Between Us”

Losing you didn’t happen all at once.
It was gradual, like fog rolling in on a familiar road,
soft at first, then total.

At the start, there were just little things.
The silence after I shared something messy,
your once warm eyes now searching mine
for signs of sin instead of pain.
You used to laugh without thinking.
Now even joy feels rehearsed, filtered,
approved by scripture.

Your words used to feel like home.
Now they sound like sermons.

You call them your spiritual family,
brothers and sisters in faith.
But I remember who you were before—
before the doctrines, the creeds, the endless rules.
Before every choice had to pass through
some unseen moral checkpoint.

You're still here, but you're not.
And every day, I lose another piece of you.
A sliver of your voice,
the glimmer in your eye,
the reckless kindness that wasn’t rooted in obligation.

I know if I ever needed help moving a couch
or a ride to the doctor,
you’d come.
Because acts of service are part of the code.
But I also know if I cried in front of you,
really cried,
grief in its raw, trembling form,
you’d flinch.
You’d offer a verse, a prayer,
a polished answer,
but never space.
Never softness.

Because to feel too deeply is pride.
To doubt is rebellion.
To sit with another’s sorrow
without trying to fix it
feels unthinkable to you.

You boast about the love your god has for me,
all the while holding me at arm’s length.
As if proximity to my hurt might poison your faith.
But what kind of love can’t stand to witness pain?

I don’t know your god.
But I know mine loves without conditions,
without checklists or shame.
And I wish you did too.

All I want is to be held by you.
To be really seen,
not assessed, not corrected,
just seen.

So I offer my tears in solitude.
Not as proof, not as plea,
but as truth.

You didn’t walk away from us in anger.
You didn’t slam the door.
You just changed the locks.
Let them give you a new name,
a new language.

And somehow,
that hurts even more.