The Fall
Words by Ashleigh Dowling
Why would she live her life like this
if God were not real?
So, He must be real.
Cognitive dissonance
keeping her faith in tune.
A cautious melody that tiptoed
between C and E and G.
Why would she have spent so many hours in a church
that they spent so many hours building,
if their god were not real?
So, he must be real.
Sunk costs keeping her faith afloat
upon a smothered sea.
Its creatures curdling beneath
the surface.
Until it all becomes clear to her that
she is a sheep in a lost flock,
a seed sown on a virgin rock,
her foundation just a fragile web of flashing fallacies and
feeble fantasies fashioned all by people.
She lets herself fall through
her whole world frays
she lands on solid ground.
The solid ground is Him.
Alone. The rock.
She looks back up towards the sky to see a galaxy
of tragic webs spun,
painfully,
strung
between trees of institutions, rules, calculations,
glistening with condemnation.
A misstep carrying all the wretched weight of hell
below?
Someday the winds will come, the earth will shake.
