In the Name of No GodI (Marcella Boccia)

In the Name of No GodI (Marcella Boccia)I was not baptized in holy water,but in the salt of my mother’s tears—she wept when I first screamed,as if she knew I was already lost.No angels whispered my name,no god carved my fate in gold.I was born in a land of relics,where saints rot beneath glass,their hands folded in silence.O Rome, O Vatican, O marble tomb,I have kissed the cracked lips of statues,searched for meaning in their hollow eyes,but they only stared back, unseeing.I have walked through cathedrals of war,where bones of the namelesslie tangled in fields of poppies,where prayers rise like smokeand vanish before they are heard.The dead have no need for gods,nor do I.I have seen the cruelty of heaven,the indifference of stars—they shine on the butcher’s knifeas they shine on the newborn’s breath.If divinity is to feel it all,then I am divine and forsaken,a prophet without a gospel,a flame without an altar.I kneel only before the earth,before the blackened trees of autumn,before the silent suffering of lambs—for their blood is as sacred as mine,and I will not drink from the chalice of slaughter.No god will claim me,no heaven will hold me.I will walk into the darkness alone,and my name will burnon the lips of the wind.