Helium

by Rudy Francisco

To the Man Standing on the Corner Holding the Sign That Said “God Hates Gays” I’ve never seen exactly who it is that you paperclip your knees, meld your hands together, and pray to but I think I know what he looks like: I bet your God is about 5’10”. I bet he weighs 185. Probably stands the way a high school diploma does when it’s next to a GED. I bet your God has a mullet. I bet he wears flannel shirts with no sleeves, a fanny pack, and says words like “getrdun.” I bet your God watches FOX news, Dog the Bounty Hunter, voted for Donald Trump, and loves Bill O’Reilly. I bet your God is a politician from Arizona. I bet his high school served racism in the cafeteria and offered “hate speech” as a second language. I bet he has a swastika inside of his throat and racial slurs tattooed to his tongue just to make intolerance more comfortable in his mouth. I bet he has a burning cross as a middle finger and Jim Crow underneath his nails. Your God is a Confederate flag’s wet dream. Conceived on a day when the sky decided to slice her own wrists. I bet your God has a drinking problem. I bet he sees the bottom of the shot glass more often than his own children. I bet he pours whiskey on his dreams until they taste like good ideas, probably cusses like an electric guitar with Tourette’s plugged into an ocean. I bet he yells like a schizophrenic nail gun, damaging all things that care about him enough to get close. I bet there are angels in Heaven with black eyes and broken halos who c...