Prayer, revised
A year after it turned around in my mouth, the prayer has settled. It is the only honest thing I say in that building.
It has been a year since the prayer changed in the pew, and I want to record that it has stayed changed. I no longer pray to be different. I have tried, out of habit, once or twice, and it comes out wrong, like singing a hymn in the wrong key. What comes out right is the other one. God bless gay people.
I say it every Sunday, under the sermon, and most nights, and sometimes at the junction where the man was beaten, quickly, walking past. I say it for E. and for his friend in Lagos who is not answering and for the boy from Nekede and for the man with one shoe. I say it for myself last, because that is the order I can manage.
I still believe. I want that written down clearly because one day someone will try to tell the story of me as a boy who lost his faith, and it is not true. I lost my faith in a building. God was not the one who said the word.
The pastor preached on the prodigal son today. The father running down the road. I thought: he is describing my mother in the kitchen with the ugu, and he does not know it.