"Prayer" by Sarah Senft

Content Warning: Sexual Violence

I had a pretty good relationship with God as a child. I believed He existed and that He was a man. I just couldn’t picture His face. Jesus was easier. His image was everywhere, hanging in simple pine frames from a piece of twine hooked over a nail.

I felt reverence for God. For a long time I said my prayers every night. Not always on bended knees, sometimes tucked under the covers just before sleep. Most of my prayers went unanswered, but that wasn't the point, was it? I considered Him a friend. Like the stuffies and woollen blankets and other imaginary companions. Except God was real. Everyone said so, and that was enough.

In the homes I knew, there were reminders of His presence. A moistened sponge in a little ceramic dish of holy water within its holder nailed to the frame of the front door. A flickering red electric candle before a picture of the Virgin Mary. And of course a cross, sometimes just plain brown cedar. Sometimes with a tiny Jesus nailed in place, a crown of thorns pressed into His head. If you looked closely, you could see the nails in His hands and feet.

I remember being raped by a man on a bed with a cross fixed above the headboard.

His rhythm pushed the headboard into the wall. I could see the cross lifting with each strike, perilously close to falling. I thought, Jesus will save me. The cross will fall. The man will stop.

I counted. One, two, three…

Nothing happened.

The cross stayed exactly where it was supposed to. A symbol of hope. Of death before rebirth.

Afterwards I dressed and went downstairs. On my way out the door I pressed my fingers into the tiny sponge soaked with holy water, as I always did. I wondered whether the fingers that had been inside me would burn when they blessed themselves.

They did not.

Sarah is a writer from Cork, Ireland, now living in Vancouver. Her work has appeared in The Closed Eye Open, 50-Word Stories, Bending Genres, Ivo Review, The Piker Press, Wingless Dreamer, and Prosetrics with forthcoming work in Wordrunner, Halfway down the Stairs, Fish Girl Collective, Excision, The Martello Journal, Interrobang Lit Feel Lit Magazine, and Orange Rose Lit mag.

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