Sluts and Saints Searching for God

 I spent some of my girlhood drenched in daisies, kicking my soft slippered feet while sitting on my grandmother’s small kitchen counter. I would gaze up at her, admiring the way her lipstick-stained cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth, smoke swirling above her head like a halo beneath the dimmed yellow stove light. We’d take turns mixing Betty Crocker cake batter singing to the Beach Boys. She taught me how to make goulash and pray to God, purple kneecaps kissing the pink carpet; canonized saint of pincurls. Easily entertained, my grandma would tie a balloon on her Pomeranian’s poofy tail and we’d laugh ourselves to tears watching her spin round and round and round, endlessly following the blue bubble like the moon chasing a car. She and Mister Rogers practically raised me while my parents worked. Two Pisces and a pom against the world. 
My parents' house was different. My mom didn’t like dogs and the oven collected dust, so I often toggled between realities. Books piled around my bedroom like tiny fires burning a hole through my head. I cast spells on soups and carved my name in trees, searching for immortality. Dreams of boys with pink wings and talking rabbits, a maladaptive melancholy that twisted my pale wrists while I practiced piano alone. Empty ceilings went on forever in our too big house. I often missed my grandma’s tiny floral couch wrapped in plastic. My dad would take me on walks in the woods where I felt an ancient ache. A primitive desire to sink my bare feet in the earth, have the soil swallow me whole. But I was never allowed to walk without shoes on. A strict rule in my home. Messes and noise were forbidden fruits that my lips never quit craving. 
If I had paid more attention to my surroundings, it would have eaten away the gummy part of my brain, leaving behind a translucent talking toad whose swollen croaks shouted butwhybutwhybutwhy. Yet sometimes I would still catch a whiff of a sour smell, the rotten madness growing in the corner of my dollhouse. A black hole in the wall gaped open like a scream after one of my parents’ many fights. A gagging sound over the steering wheel while I ate a candy bar in the backseat of my aunt's car while her husband choked her still. I prayedandprayedandprayed like grandma had told me to; numb tongue scraping against my baby teeth, squeezing my eyes shut. 
Finally, as a teenage girl, I found Jesus. Between the shadows of neon lights, I flourished under flamingo-colored fluorescents, drinking in the sweat-flavored smoke. Arms raised above my head in reverence while my hips bewitched the stage; a glitter-covered angel. It was reckless abandon that brought me closer to finding my way, upside down stoplights and stolen street signs guiding me down a winding path to freedom. I would sit in my car before school, smoking cigarettes in my rolled-up skirt, absolutely sure I was invincible at seventeen. Vodka filled valentine on a soda pop stand, I stood out in a way that made boys my age nervous. Or so I like to think. I ran with waywards, graduated and good at things that I couldn’t quite grasp. I fell for the gritty glamour, the Instagram filter of “vanlife” and odd jobs to survive. Not old enough to see the danger of a twenty-five-year-old unemployed man hanging around high schools, the stubble of an unshaved cheek only visible in the daytime. Lost in sparkling dollar bills rolled up like love notes, I’d feel closest to the Holy Spirit after bathing in moonlight tangled up against red velvet backseats and black leather jackets. 
I planned a wedding instead of a graduation party, but it fell through like change in a sidewalk gutter. Instead of leaving at the altar, I deserted my diamond in a dark dirty basement where I would eventually live with a group of lost men like some sort of fucked up Snow White. Sugar plum highs and bathroom stall lows, I’d eat my knuckles raw trying to find the next fix. I could blame the teacher from my elementary Catholic school who said I’d be knocked up by 16. I could shake my fist at the sky, chipped nail polish falling like confetti. But the truth is, I chose it. I stuck myself to bad decisions and worse men like gum under a fake suede shoe, searching for love in the pretty glow of gas station slot machines and motorcycle rides. 
And then I lost Him, Jesus, he left me. A vagabond violet in a pile of weeds. He abandoned me at a Motel 6, bloodshot eyes peering through the curtains. White paint peeling from the door where the lock clicked, an endless echo of tumbling chambers knocking the back of my skull. If you stand under a cold shower long enough, it starts to feel like a fire melting away your skin like ice cream or bird shit; prayers pissed down the drain.