I found God out behind the church last week,
Its many limbs broken like twigs,
Its body a lump of dripping fat and edema.
It told me I was sick, and I was inclined to believe it
In the shadow of its honeycomb tapestries
And its songs of flesh and light.

God called me a word I could not pronounce
And took up in my living room.
Within three days it had grown to bulge the walls
And I needed a new couch.
I decided to stop having company.

One day at the dinner table
God asked me if I loved correctly.
It hissed in a way that broke me when I said I didn't think so,
Its bloated skin shuddering in waves,
And told me not to speak of love again.

Sometimes God crawls into my room, poised over my bed
While whispering stories about ancient pain,
The ways it tore bodies apart from the inside.
When I took to locking it out,
It simply pressed up through the vents
Or skittered against my door in a code,
Speaking of Mary and the agony of an 18-hour labor.

Ms. Partridge down the street came to visit
And asked me, crying, about the lights—
Not the stars, she insisted, but something higher above that pulsed,
And the growling, she said, the growling
That came from deep in the Earth.
I told her she should call an exterminator.
She nodded like that made sense
And died in her sleep three days later.

God does not pay rent.
It tells me it owes me nothing
After burying its children a thousand times each day.
And I tell God I feel bad for it
As I skip meals to keep the lights on.