I.
I remember my father’s bible.  It was chocolate leather, embossed in gold (fading to silver) personalization.  He had expected nothing less for Christmas.  Yet, I never felt right about my choice of message: He is always with us.

II.
My mother always knelt beside my bed at midnight with her elbows resting on my quilt and her lips asking to keep my life just one more day.  At quarter past, she turned her back and I cried into spaces that her prayers had missed: Lord, are you with me?

III.
The doctors have slipped snakes into my veins, pumping their venom through my heart as the answer to my mother’s wish.  I am not getting any better.  No one will say anything with their lips, but everyone shows everything in their eyes.  My thoughts are my only comfort: Lord, please save me.

IV.
There is no hope for my life.  When they told me, I removed the chain from my throat and pressed the cross into my mother’s palm, listening closely as her heart shattered under its weight.  I have asked to be buried with a single white rose; the magical irony of suffocating its innocence cures my feelings of guilt and betrayal.  We are both destined to die alone: He was never with us.