Atheists Who Kneel and Pray

by Tarryn Fisher

His eyes, a mossy green, were used as weapons. They were honest eyes, and so you trusted him, all the while he undressed you with them.

His voice was husky and deep; an intimate voice. The girls with the fur jackets turned around in their seats to watch him. I felt his voice. It moved something in me. But, I wasn’t going to do that again. I was done.

Relentless. There’s something about a relentless man. You couldn’t ignore them. If they asked long enough, eventually they wore you down. Women looked for that, persistent interest. An investor. We were, in ourselves, an entire universe. We felt too much, talked too much, wanted too much—the anti-simple.

The men I’d been with had been cloying in their need for me. They wanted and expected and it drained me until there was nothing to do but leave. It was entirely one-sided, but none of them ever thought that.

How often do we lie to ourselves and say we don’t care about something when we do?

When I left, I had just been one of his heartbreaks, not his first. The first was powerful; it changed you. My own had been so devastating, altering the way I looked at men and love. And it wasn’t something that just wore off with time, returning you to your previous state of belief. Once you lost your faith, it was gone.

Be careful, David, I wanted to say. He was trying to see into me and that was never a good idea.

“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.”

Men had a thing for female vulnerability. They wanted to be their hero.

I had a professor in university that told me that the spectrums of pain were meant to be felt and that they were beautiful in their own way because they caused change.

My drug was wanderlust. I got high by starting over. We always had a drug. We could replace one with another, but humans were addicts.

I’d replaced wanderlust with a human. That was a terrible mistake. New addiction, new problem.

Everyone smiling like we weren’t all dying of our loneliness.

“Now there is love marked on your skin,” he said to me after, kissing the spot.

“You can’t just cut people off when you feel done with them. They’re part of your tapestry.”

I want the pain to stay where it is, hard and heavy. It makes me feel close to her. I am inspired, but I am empty.

I wanted to speak her language. I wanted to be her language.

Then I feel more desperate. People die. We are not permanent. We have to hurry if we want things.

Understanding comes with knowledge. Knowledge comes with time.

It’s not true what they say, that you can only give your heart away once. That’s the philosophy of the young. The old know better, they know it’s not the heart that you give away, but the mind. Fuck…shit…the mind is a powerful thing. It controls the heart, but most people don’t know that. I have to find her.

Bad boys are only fun when they’re threatening to break your heart.

line. “Stop trying to convince the world that you’re more damaged than anyone else, Yara.”

Anger, resentment, the dire need for answers—is put on hold for…one…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight—seconds.

himself. I am so lonely in that moment—so aware of the fact that I have never healed or moved on. When he steps back and we’re no longer touching I feel inordinately sad.

It was a game, but then all of a sudden I was very much in love with you. Very much. It got to be too much. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

It was wrong. I was wrong. I deserve love, but it’s going to take me a very long time to learn that.

It’s when you can’t get someone out. They crawl inside you and they just live there for the rest of your life.”

Divorce is easy, anyone can get divorced—the letting go part is next to impossible. Hearts are wild, uncontrollable things, you can’t just instruct them.

That’s all I am, isn’t it? Yara without love.

I threw off love like it was a blanket in the middle of summer. Irritating, stifling.

I’m being cruel, but I don’t care. Cruel and the truth are the same thing.

I don’t care a thing about what bad people can do to me. I care about what good people can do.

I hate her, and I hate him, and I hate myself.

“She said that if you give a random object to a person who is searching for something they would create their own meaning around it, and that meaning would reflect the deepest desire of their heart. It was a way for the person to find their way back to you. Even if it took a lifetime. There was no way I could have said anything to make you realize it was me you were looking for your whole life. You had to realize that on your own.”

“That’s good. You don’t forgive because they deserve it. Most of the time they don’t. You forgive to keep your heart soft. To move forward without bitterness. Forgiveness is for you.”

“Please forgive me for leaving. I don’t know how to be what you need and I’m afraid you won’t let me try.”