In my room, both Death and God reside,

Together, rare, they sit and share my space. 

I’m too angry at both to be afraid.

I am too empty to be filled.

Praise falls on ears too furious to hear, 

Perhaps God hides in breaths between the notes, 

Yet roars within my head make Him unclear, 

I don’t know who to turn to–

the One who doesn’t listen

or the One who always does

but never answers.

“I suffer,” I beg for help, my voice a distant sea.

Well-aware He is; 

I’d still ask Him; “help me,”

the familiar words ripping 

themselves off my tongue.

I could scream, 

but my voice is a whisper,

a memory of the prayers

I used to say every night.

Death encourages me to speak

but I have nothing else to say.

I stare at the empty space 

where God stood. 

“I’m suffering,” I tell Him. 

His silence does not waver—

reverberating through layers

of rage laced within me softly asking:

 What would He do? 

I look towards Death. 

“If I gave my seething hurt to Him?” 

She answers on His behalf. 

“If given up, He’d bear your weight,” she said,

“But suffering remains, though shared instead.”

Sat in utter silence,

with the sharp metallic taste

of blood on my lips; contemplating 

what if I did something unthinkable

 to myself—who'll come first?

 I wonder if He has any intent 

to answer me at all.

I wonder if He’d be as silent 

if one of His own were dying.

I think, if I gave my anger to Him,

He would say, “what a waste.”

“Take it,” and I thrust 

everything I am

into the space where I imagine

His palms would be.

The silence is suffocating; 

the desperation of one

of His children uncontained, 

overflowing. 

Too relentless to overlook, 

too vivid to ignore.

Death tells me that someday, 

God will answer me, 

and He will explain why.

When that happens,

He’ll have to coax the words out of me.