God is a Teenager
Section1
God is a teenage girl. She wears ripped fishnets, heavy eyeliner, and a smirk sharp enough to draw blood. The fire doesn’t scare her. Why should it? Fire only destroys what was already weak. She sits cross-legged on her unmade bed, staring at the ceiling covered in glow-in-the-dark stars. They’re peeling at the edges but still hanging on.
The faint buzz of a cheap Bluetooth speaker fills the room, playing something angsty and raw, just loud enough to drown out the hum of disappointment wafting from downstairs. Her mom's voice drifts up through the floorboards, offering some meaningless plea like, "Dinner’s ready!" It never really is — just peas and dry toast again.
She twists the mood ring on her finger, the stone stuck on a burnt orange shade, somewhere between “annoyed” and “I might burn the world down.”
God’s not real, she thinks. But if she were, she’d probably look like me. Messy. Chaotic. A body of impulse with chipped black nail polish.
Section2
The night air smells like ash and regret as she walks home from a party she didn’t really want to be at. She left early, like always, slipping out while everyone else was too busy making out or vomiting in the bushes to notice.
Her Converse scuff against the pavement, rhythm matching the gum snapping between her teeth. The stars above shimmer faintly, and for a moment, they almost look like faces—eyeless, ancient, watching.
She stops in the middle of the empty street and stares up at them.
"Do you ever get tired of knowing everything?" she asks the stars.
They don’t answer, but the wind shifts, cold against her bare arms. She takes that as a maybe.
The mood ring on her finger flickers. Pink now, soft and dangerous, like blood in water or stolen bubblegum.
Section3
Her mom tries to feed her the next morning.
"Peas are good for you," she says, pushing the sad green spheres around the plate.
"I’m not a rabbit," she deadpans, stabbing one with a fork just to prove a point.
Her mom sighs. "Oh, honey." She says it like a prayer, like if she just says it enough times, everything broken will magically fix itself.
Her dad isn’t any better. He lingers in the doorway that night, wanting to say something meaningful but settling for a stiff, "Goodnight."
She waits, hoping for more. It never comes.
Section4
Every summer, she runs.
She packs a backpack with essentials — gum, eyeliner, and a half-empty notebook filled with scrawled thoughts she’ll never share. The air outside is thick and sour, stinking of burnt meat and something wild she can’t quite name.
The woods call to her, and she answers without hesitation.
Branches scratch at her skin, but she doesn’t care. The river nearby hisses like it’s angry at the world, just like her.
She stops by the water and stares at her reflection. Her eyes are too wide, too wild, as if they’ve seen things no seventeen-year-old should ever see.
"Who are you trying to be?" she asks the girl in the water.
The girl doesn’t answer.
Section5
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