The End of Prayer

by Adrianne Summer

THE END OF PRAYER

I stood before the altar in prayer,

lighting candles for the soul of the slain prince,

our Once and Future King.

The rituals of mourning and memory gave no solace.

Pain, incandescent, illuminated hidden scars.

A weary agony filled my soul. It began to wail. Bereft of tears, it quaked.

Anger, hatred, wrath trembled from its sepulcher.

Heralds of the invocation of grief and grievance to come.

“Did we not bear them in chains? The fruits of our wombs stolen from us.

Have we not found them? The strange and bitter fruit of which Billie sang.

The ornaments of sheeted ghosts.

Have we not beheld as packs of Blue-haired wolves with tin star eyes devoured them?

How many have we found in chalk beneath the reapers shroud? Dark art on the asphalt.

How many have we lost to the dystopian world of concrete and color?

Where kings battle kings for death’s throne?

How many have we crowned in a regalia of roses, a coronation of circumstance,

and pageantry of pomp to rest in the dust?

Do we not stretch out our hands and touch the tempered glass behind which they sit,

in zippered chains?

Do we not hold tight the bodies of our living princes

that through the sheer will of our fear and the strength of our love,

we may keep them from the fate the die has cast?”

I stilled and listened for His voice. For naught.

The queried silence conjured a proclamation of rage, of violence.

“Hark, my sister queens. Hope in this land has ended. The wandering over.

Mark your doors with the blood of our fallen kings.

For the spirit of vengeance comes to manifest the prophecies of the Elder King.

To break the arc of history, for it has been too long and bent too slow.

To tear down the dams on the waters of justice and rivers of righteousness, that they may wash over this land and satisfy our souls.”

I extinguished the tapers in the name of the triune God.

Shattered balms of peace and love in the sulfured smoke.

I did not want to pray anymore.