Brick by brick by

Brick

By brick

“I love you, too”

“I think so, too”

“Oh my god, me, too”

I fling them through the windows of churches- but not real churches like church churches, but REAL churches like little benches in courtyards that everyone knows not to sit on because Mr. and Mrs. Gallegos have their names engraved on the top. Like book pages with no bent corners because GOD use a bookmark. Like little kisses on my brow when I’m mad because you know I’m scared of wrinkles. Those churches.

All those sincere things

Those good things

I hate them.

So I blow apart the walls and windows

With bricks made of platitudes.

Brick

By brick

By brick.

“You are SO beautiful!”

Oh my god, thank you! You, too!

By brick.

“I think you’re going to like them!”

I think so, too.

By brick.

“I’m so lucky to have you. I love you.”

I love you, too.

By brick.

There’s something so saccharine about the church you built me into. About the walls made of words you flung my way hoping I’d make myself someplace you could call home. Sincere words. Good words. Words I know you meant once. Words something in me knows you probably still mean. But you didn’t build me windows. Maybe it’s because I was the type to sit in front of them and dream of the other side of the pane. Hoping someone passing by would want to free me. Break me out of my windowless church

“You’re different now.”

I know. You, too.

Brick.

“I miss the way you used to be.”

Fuck, I do, too.

By brick.

“You’ll never be happy.”

I think so, too.

By brick.

I do this thing

Where I run out of things to say

Insincere things. Good-intentioned things.

And those things, the bricks I stacked around me- reinforcing the walls you built your fake church around- those bricks get sparse.

My walls develop holes.

Maybe I AM beautiful when I dress in the things you like.

Maybe I AM sweet when I give you the things you used to take.

Maybe I DO love you, too.

And then there I am.

Bare.

Walls torn down, brick by brick.

And then somewhere

Through the window of a church, a real church- not a church church- a whispered Jeopardy! answer before Alex Trebek shouts it, a shirt with a hole in the armpit but is perfect for sleeping in, a single flower in a nightstand vase to match a bouquet in the apartment of someone fifteen minutes away— a REAL church

Someone, maybe a stranger,

Maybe me

Throws a brick that smashes the glass

To smithereens

“I think you’re going to love them!”

Yeah. Me, too.