In the beginning was the Word and the Word was as of yet undefined. The Word had freckles across the bridge of her nose that only showed up in the sunshine, and the freckles were complemented really nicely by the shade of pink she’d just dyed her hair. In the beginning the Word was God and the Word was with God—they were roommates. The Word had met God through a Craigslist ad. She was moving to the west coast to get an MA in sound design at a small arts college—even though she couldn’t really afford it, because damnit she loved making music and she was good at it and she wanted a couple years to dedicate to it—and God had just dropped out of that same arts college after his best friend (and lead singer of his band) OD’d and he was too depressed to finish school, so now he needed a new roommate to split rent. She liked that he was plugged into the local DIY scene, plus he seemed like a nice enough guy—even though he was as bro-y as you’d expect the bassist in an all-dude punk band to be, and he wasn’t really one for deep conversations—but they’d have late night Smash Bros sessions on his Switch after he’d close up at the bar and it was fun and it felt kind of like he was the older brother she never had. And she was pretty sure he’d clocked her right away—she could just tell—but he never said anything or asked any invasive questions. And then one night when she ran home crying—because she’d been walking back from the corner store in her favorite leather miniskirt when some asshole yelled faggot and threw a bottle at her out of a passing car—God asked her what was wrong, and if he should call off his shift, and she told him no, because neither of them could miss a pay check if they were gonna pay rent this month so he went to work. Then after binging a few episodes of Steven Universe and crying all night she noticed God was later than usual, and when he finally got home he had a bouquet of daylilies and some lipstick in her favorite shade of purple that he picked up from the Walgreens down the street. And when he gave them to her she started crying all over again and he held her in a way that said this wasn’t romantic because he knew she wasn’t into guys and he respected that, he just cared about her. And if you haven’t figured it out by now in this poem The Word is Jesus and Jesus is a trans girl and her roommate, God, loves her. And she’s beautiful, and she’s just figuring out who she is as a person and what she wants to do with her life. And she looks just like me, if I looked just the way I want to. And isn’t that how it is? Jesus shows us God. Shows us ourselves, like we wish we were. Like we always have been.
