God

His name is the smallest thing I have ever held between my palms,
pressed together, as though in prayer.
I stopped saying it.
Taught myself psalms instead -
bribed my own tongue into hymn.
None of this came naturally.
I dreamed whole cathedrals into being;
their candlelight trying to push back the darkness.
I dreamed of hammering nails through my pale wrists.
When I wake, I am a girl without a father
- which is to say that when I wake,
nothing has changed.