Atheists Who Kneel and Pray

by Tarryn Fisher

Finally, I settled on all black. I was emo, I was goth, I was an assassin of hearts and I didn’t give a fuck about David fucking Lisey. I pulled my hair into a tight severe bun and slashed eyeliner across my lids. My lipstick…there was none, because girls who didn’t wear lipstick didn’t care.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I’m not broken because I don’t want the same thing as everyone else. And, no, you’re not invited to fix me, or soften my heart, or make me want things I never knew I wanted.”

What’s the point in making yourself look like you’re not hurt, you know? We spend so much time pretending nothing can touch us that men have actually started to believe it.

On a Friday night in August, she came to The Crocodile in fishnets, a rose gold miniskirt, and a black wife-beater. She’d dyed her hair silver like those uber posh too-cool-for-school Suicide Girls, and in her sweaterless state I could see the ink all over her arms. Her whole look screamed—I don’t give a fuck because I’m a sex kitten.

The snow was falling around me, shocking my face and hand with little pinpricks as it landed. I’d stared up at the sky and thought about how I didn’t believe anymore—not in God or his creation. Definitely not in love. She’d come as a thief in the night and taken it all away. How could a person do that? How could they have so much power?

If someone doesn’t want you, the only self-respecting thing to do is to let them go.

Women use their bodies like weapons.

Atheists who kneel and pray, the voice sings. Begging for just anything. Non-believers bitten down to the core. Pass them a word, give them a string. When you’re dying you cling. Yara, Yara, the god of disbelief. I worship between your legs. Pray to your fallacy, pray to your winter. You kill everything.

We’re all just atheists who kneel and pray, you made me believe and then erased the day. Fallacy, Yara, a molten idol. A flesh and blood god, not a god at all. A girl who calls you just to kill. Yara, Yara, the god of disbelief.

I did it. I did what I’d set out to do. I wanted to break a man’s heart for his art. Rip his belief system to shreds so he’d have to rebuild it. And that was the thing about a scorned artist, wasn’t it? Their new medium was you. Just ask Bukowski, ask Plath, ask Taylor Swift whose blood they used for ink. David was going to hate me for the rest of his life. But, he was going to make beautiful music. He already had.

He’s different. I suppose that happens after people are apart for a length of time. They become more themselves while you cling to who they used to be.

Live barefoot and fucking fight.

“I may not deserve him, but he chose me. I always knew what you were up to,” I say. “All of your questions and underhanded insults. You think you have him? You silly little girl. I feel sorry for you because you’ve never had him. You don’t even know what it’s like to have him.”

I know she’s afraid. I can feel her fear on my back. She only had him because I didn’t.