by Braiden Ellis
“I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
very pleasant have you been to me;
your love to me was extraordinary,
surpassing the love of women.” – 2 Samuel 1:26 (ESV)
I will sometimes scroll past a post
on Instagram—arms around a girlfriend, then fiancée
then wife. I remember how he told me
he was afraid of facing heaven;
afraid to love me more than God.
But seeing shining teeth across his goddamn face
and his arm wrapped around her waist;
I know the truth.
At nine, running through ordained playgrounds.
After-service innocence and pervasive
naïveté to what he and I would become.
Christ holds His arms aloft, stretching the window.
Parents hoist their strings.
He held my hand as we said good-bye,
until we saw each other the next week.
I could not understand my Sunday teachings,
the hate that we clenched in our small fists
from so early on: for sinners, for God, for us.
Turned thirteen, eyes forward as his father’s sermons
sailed across the sanctuary, and I was left
exposed when his hand brushed across my own,
shaking against icicle fingers. I heard
God’s language, but only saw false love
shaped with volleys of brimstone.
I heard my mother tell her friend:
God is really speaking through him.
Cries of Amen! when the pastor screamed
After I yanked my hand from his,
and ran to the bathroom,
I could taste the pillars of salt as my tears
ran down my face, between my teeth.
When I was fifteen, I texted Jonathan, I’m scared.
He told me that we would get through this
somehow, when we were no longer kids.
Waking up to gibberish texts from his dozing off,
and holding the phone close as I prayed for him.
I never knew that being an adult would be
so much harder, lonelier, angrier.
And when he told me he loved me,
I believed it, that God couldn’t force us apart,
couldn’t burn our city to the ground,
but I couldn’t see Second Peter.
Sixteen meant heavy breathing when
the pastor’s son held my face close,
took my lip between his teeth and whispered
that he couldn’t hide any longer.
Could he truly love me as his own soul?
God seemed to hunt us lost sheep of Israel
through frantic shaking of a bathroom door.
His eyes, wide with desperate fear
as the door is silent once more.
His lips find mine, and maybe
I could have known that he lied.
Were we David and Jonathan?
We crashed into one another swifter than Samuel’s eagles,
and so much stronger than his lions,
but I never saw the cracks that you gave my confidence
and my sense of trust until you pushed me away.
Convenience and family were more important to you
than identity and freedom. You
hide behind chapel walls and women’s curves.
As much as I want and, ironically, pray,
I cannot hold you forever, not
while you fear to look back at Sodom and Gomorrah.
and taste the salt of tears and sweat.
Braiden Ellis is a senior at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia. He is double majoring in French and English, with a concentration in Creative Writing. He is very active in the World Languages department at GCSU and enjoys listening to visiting writers’ readings on campus.