Empty warfare

Today, a challenge: talk to Jesus. Tell him about your day. Tell him how you felt the moment you woke up. Tell him how you feel this instant.

Abrupt silence has emptied the crowded room.

My thoughts ramble into a botched version of prayer, communicating itself to someone I once thought I knew. It's been a while. I try.

I can't.

Not when my eyes, sore from lack of sleep, is witness to a dozen others who, with eyes shut tight, palms pressed together in prayer, are narrating their own day to the same "Jesus" I am trying to talk to.

Today, a horror show: the museum from the past year, lined with shelves of books about the dictator and his martial law. Ghosts of martyrs cry out from within the photographs; faces of the past. Names flash from every news clipping, or engraved in every stone.

Forget the faces, forget the names. But not the cries. For god's sake, not the cries.

Fact: My name under the headline. A colored picture of the dictator's wife next to it.

Yesterday, a war: my bedroom door locked to the sounds of fists pummeling flesh, voices elevated to curses; to questions and answers, to arguments and reasons. To anger. To fear and hate and helplessness.

A glass shatters -- the one I used to fancy as a child. The one that holds the memory of every face I have ever worn growing up. I walked into the kitchen this afternoon, forgetting about the broken glass. The yellow walls, bare without it, caught me by the scruff of my neck. Panic crept it.

This is not home anymore.