a prayer from the one who doesn’t believe in a god

I’m holding a flame in a church you’ve never been in. You’ve never worshiped your lord in here. And I, the tourist, attempt to see what you saw in relics like these. Is it the incandescent flames puncturing the walls, staining the virgin, bleeding the glass? Do you see the same stains that I do? Or do you just see Jesus born to a woman named? Maybe you saw life. You saw a reasoning to the earth spinning. I never did ask if you thought it spun. Well it does, Grandmother. Maybe you know that now. I hope you know more than me wherever you are, that’s if you still are.

I’m here to give something away. Something I cannot keep. I found your old notebook, Grandma. Its black leather shell still has your creases in it. You’d never open it and lay it flat; instead you’d crush the binding as you wrote and pressed your words into its pages. It was tucked into the folds of your couch. Your handwriting is so specific too; you capitalize your vowels for some reason. Mini capitalized A’s everywhere. Is that an Irish quirk? I know you learned to write in school because your farm required too much work for your parents to teach you.

This book: it’s filled with pieces of you. Addresses of people I don’t know. Phone numbers to people without last names. Friends from the benches you visited are in here. The recipe for your potato bread is in here. My cat’s birthday, your late husband’s birthday, your other granddaughter’s birthday. The size and style of the pants you liked from the magazine you order from is in here.

You even have math problems from when I was six in here that you’d tease me with. You’d give me an equation and I’d have to solve it on my chalkboard. I remember I’d sit on the floor under the kitchen table and you’d feed me the heads of steamed broccoli every time I answered right.

This book was always with you, even when you were at church. Why did you like coming to church so much? Was it the atmosphere of an echo of a man? Perhaps somewhere in the blue cosmos of the ceiling, in the angels’ touch, there was someone to caress you after you lost your son.

Every Sunday that I was with you I’d go to church with you. I never wanted to go, but I hated to see you be alone. I think you always knew I didn’t believe in your god. Do you remember the time you pushed me away from walking to church with you? Because I wasn’t there for Him, I was there for you. And now I’m here in a church, alone, without you. I’m lighting a candle for you in this red glass. I hate to give money to a gendered name that does not include me, but you did, and this is something you’d do. Every Sunday you were out with your umbrella that was actually a cane; you just pretended it was always going to rain. And you’d light a candle for you last born kneeling before Teresa (the only woman I think you loved) asking her to deliver you from evil to the clouds above because it’s only on earth that a son dies out of reach of his mother’s love.

I was born just days after he drowned, but no one celebrated my birth, just a death. Do you hate that life was in me and not him, that I refused to worship the same, or am I just looking to give you more blame?

I have your money, Grandma. The code to your safe is written neatly in the last page of your notebook. Did you mean for me to have this notebook? Was this meant for me to find? It’s the only thing you left me. Everything in your apartment was left to everyone else even though I’m the one that walked you to church even when you pushed me away. Even when I explained why I didn’t believe in what you did, you pushed me away. I guess that’s what separates believers from people like me; I still stayed by your side even when I disowned the catholic girl you bred me to be.

I’m the one standing here now in a church that is not mine and I’m lighting this perishable candle for an eternal god wondering if you ever lit one for me when you were alive and is it too much to look to the frescos above and ask why? This money, this gift, I don’t think was meant for me. I don’t think you loved me enough on earth to give this to me. I’m here to return it to you, Grandmother. Even if this is not your church, this is your god and I cannot keep something that is plagued by your resentment towards people like me.

Do you remember when you worked the fields on a neighbor’s farm for a week when their wife was sick? Do you remember the poverty your family felt when they let their 13-year-old daughter live at the neighbor’s farm to work? Do you remember when your cousin was kidnapped to work on a widower’s farm to replace the deceased wife? Do you remember how they paid you? Not with the money you now have in your safe, Grandma. No, they gave you a basket of oranges. Do you remember how your cousin escaped? I don't remember if she ever did. That was your Ireland in the 1930s. That was your life that your god gave you. And that was the life you said god rescued you away from to come to America.

Is this why there’s this much money in this safe? Your fear of losing everything? Your fear of collapse? Your fear that you’d have to tend fields again for your next meal? You lived in New York City ever since your voyage from Ireland and you never even used this money to see a Broadway play. I guess you never forget fear and that’s why this money is here so clean and not spent. You lost your husband and your son, but it was your god who took them away. And now I, the granddaughter, attempt to love you in ways I think you'd like. To fix what cannot be repaired I offer your life's worth back to your god. Perhaps now your debt is paid. Maybe one day our spirits will meet, unattached and undivided by a prayer. Maybe I'll see you in a space where we can both be free.