i make it out alive.
actually.
now what:
the fluorescent lights of 6 pm bend over me like a disappointed choir.
aisle seven: pasta, wine, more loneliness than the management has shelf space for.
i press my palm against the glass jars like a lover. marinara. carbonara. alfredo.
sauces for the different ways grief learns to dress itself.
a girl in a thrift store mirror tells me g—d is hiding behind the prom dresses.
g—d has yellow nail polish and chewing gum breath. g—d winks at me and steals a sequin clutch.
i laugh. security doesn't see. they never do.
outside, a moon made of bitten fingernails peels itself open and says,
"you survived, sure. now survive the surviving."
the parking lot hums psalms only jewish grandmothers remember.
they smell like mothballs and old paperbacks and stubborn prayers.
i carry a bottle of cheap red and a box of rigatoni in arms that still remember cradle and coffin.
there’s no banquet waiting for me. just the long, slow mikvah of cooking for one.
wine spills like blood. pasta sticks to the walls like regret.
i eat with my hands. i let the sauce smear my face like warpaint.
there are no rules here. no clean plates. no clean endings.
just a girl,
just a g—d,
just a grocery list rewritten in the language of hunger.
—
AND then:
doors crack open wider:
the angel in aisle nine wears torn sneakers and hisses secrets at me through chipped teeth,
"you are not built for their furniture. you are not built for their futures."
i tie sadness around my wrist like a hospital band. it glows pink under the checkout scanner.
the cashier says have a nice night and i say i dare you to mean it.
i stack cans of hope next to guilt next to forgiveness next to red wine and the clerk does not blink.
they are used to girls like me, they say,
girls who wear their survival on their receipts.
the parking lot is a temple and my cart is a coffin and my shoes are altars.
i immerse myself in low-sodium marinara.
i ascend into the headlights.
i crown myself with plastic bags.
g—d texts me at 3:11 a.m.: u up?
i leave it on read.
i build a throne out of boxed macaroni and whisper my own commandments:
thou shalt not apologize for limping.
thou shalt not wait for resurrection.
thou shalt not pretend pasta is ever just pasta.
the master's house is a clearance rack.
the master's house is on fire.
the master's tools are melting into ugly jewelry no one wants.
i make it out alive.
actually.
now what:
i lick the warpaint off my own mouth.
i sit cross-legged in the ashes.
i eat.
i bless my hunger.
i begin again.
—
AND THEN:
i am lamb.
i am lamb.
i am lamb, throat lined with tongues, the mall's halogen mercy singing my sins clean.
i am lamb, marked for exodus, blood on the doorframe of survival.
i am lamb, running from bondage into the blistering new day.
i am lamb, whose blood on the doorpost.
somewhere, eighth grade judaism class:
moses parts the sea of lockers,
david slingshotting spitballs at goliath, the math teacher,
rachel weeps in the gymnasium bathroom,
a menorah lights my chipped front tooth when i smile wrong.
the thrift store g—d lifts me in her dirty fingernails and says:
"you are the prayer and the breaking."
in the back of the pasta aisle, i hear the moon weeping
seven apple slices left rotting on a cafeteria tray.
the wine in my bag sobs softly like a fever dream.
six pm becomes six twenty-one becomes six twenty-two
each minute another nail in girlhood's coffin.
g—d unpacks her pockets:
one friendship bracelet,
one candy wrapper,
one photograph of a girl grinning through bloody knees.
i ask her for a blessing.
she hands me a shopping list instead:
- rigatoni
- mouthfuls of dirt
- the word "beloved" written backward on my ribs
outside:
the asphalt splits like red sea.
(they say one girl tried to split the parking lot herself. she slammed her cart into the cracks until her hands bled. the asphalt yawned open, not for her, but she walked through it anyway, like stubbornness was enough.)
shopping carts crash into each other like tired prophets.
the angels are drunk and barefoot, trying to parallel park destiny.
(the oven of akhnai cracked open in aisle nine, and from it spilled a thousand arguments, a thousand miracles, a thousand girls who chose survival over silence.)
i think i will make it out alive.
actually.
now what:
i tattoo the receipt across my heart.
i eat the psalms like crumbs of ancient bread.
i laugh and laugh until the fluorescent lights short-circuit.
i bless the loneliness.
i drink the grief like wine.
i kneel before the half-off rigatoni and i call it holy.
amen.
amen.
amen in lowercase only.
—
and THEN:
the clouds unhinge their jaws,
spilling shopping carts, lost receipts, bloody homework, abandoned rosaries, unsent letters,
girlhood sobbing in a thousand languages no teacher grades correctly.
the pasta aisle shudders—the shelves crumble—
noodle-storm, canned-tomato-hail
wine-rivers flood the automatic doors.
someone is screaming.
it might be me.
it might be g—d again, trying on my voice like a coat that doesn’t quite fit.
moses taps my forehead with a price scanner.
beep.
you are worth $4.99 on discount.
beep.
you are buy-one-get-one-free grief.
eve is crouched on top of the freezer section eating a bruised pomegranate.
"you survived," she says through purple teeth,
"but are you ready to hunger properly?"
i kneel at the manna fallen from the hunger between stars,
rail made of frozen pizzas and canned corn,
press my face to the holy linoleum,
whisper prayers in coupon codes and expired warranties.
the intercom crackles:
cleanup in aisle all of them.
cleanup in your gut.
cleanup in your mother's mistakes.
i crawl into the cart.
i crown myself queen of the expired yogurt kingdom.
the milk sours and we call it prophecy.
the bananas blacken and we call it wisdom.
the parking lot turns to salt.
(a girl looked back at the wine aisle and turned into a salt statue. they left her there for weeks, a warning and a prayer.)
the carts turn to locusts.
the sky cracks in half and out pour
all the girlhoods we buried under polite smiles,
all the g—d-mirrors we shattered at thirteen,
all the pasta dinners we made for no one.
someone lights a candle in the wine aisle.
someone tattoos a psalm on my tongue.
someone hands me a sword made of grocery lists and dares me to love it.
AND I:
carve the commandments into the inside of my own skin, backwards, so only the mirror can read them:
- thou shalt not fear the fluorescent angels.
- thou shalt dance barefoot through the broken glass of becoming.
- thou shalt not apologize for being the flood, the famine, and the feast.
outside the store, the moon is bartering with a rabbi.
ten apple slices for safe passage.
a prayer for a coupon.
a kiss on the forehead for one more borrowed hour of softness.
i sprint through the broken glass doors, barefoot, bleeding, laughing.
one girl says: "survival is enough."
another girl says: "no, survival must sing."
a boy mutters: "singing is betrayal. silence is safer."
the prophet shrugs: "all are true," and stitches all three into her jacket.
g—d watches from the clearance aisle, scribbles both answers in the margins, blesses them all anyway and laughs
laughing like a heretic set free from the stake.
laughing like girlhood finally taking its gloves off.
laughing like wine stains are holy water.
laughing until the neon signs stutter and collapse into smoke.
i make it out alive.
actually.
now what:
i plant my receipt in the dirt.
(once, a girl planted an old shopping list. it sprouted strange things: a can of hope, a bruised plum, a song too broken to sing.)
i water it with old songs.
i watch as pasta blooms from the concrete like a golden plague.
i name every noodle after a girl who made it out broken but breathing.
i name every cracked jar after a promise i swore i'd keep.
i name every sip of wine after the nights the fear didn't win.
and the thrift store g—d watches.
and the eighth grade prophets watch.
and the wounded, glorious, furious angels of aisle seven watch.
and the stars blink like checkout scanners.
and i—
wine-drenched, receipt-armored, girl of broken aisles and burning prayers,
i keep walking.
into the smoking horizon.
into the unfinished psalm.
into the raggedy mouth of the next survival.
—
AND then:
the rigatoni vines climb up my arms, thorns made of shopping cart wires.
the wine puddles around my bare feet like a second, bloodier skin.
i grow a second mouth in my chest; it whispers recipes backwards,
whispers survival spells in the language of burnt toast and almosts.
the girl in the thrift store mirror slaps me across the face with a lace glove and says:
"no one is coming to save you, pilgrim."
"save yourself with coupons and curses."
"save yourself with store-brand wine and outlaw prayers."
and the parking lot splits again, wider now,
the cracks spill out every bad kiss, every unpaid therapy bill,
every desperate prayer whispered into jacket collars in late november.
visions start to rise from the asphalt cracks:
a boy crowned in duct-taped receipts, blowing a shofar made from a soda can.
teenage girls lighting menorahs from cigarette ends and birthday candles.
a child dragging a plastic sword carved from abandoned milk crates.
moses himself leaning against a graffiti wall, sighing, sketching lost maps on a napkin.
rachel weeping over a fountain of spilled soda.
esther stealing lip gloss from the ruins and slipping it into broken pockets.
prophets dancing in the puddles of spoiled wine, barefoot and furious.
angels stitched from plastic bags and caution tape, unfolding into the floodlight skies.
an angel with a barcode halo weeping into a shopping cart.
ezra writing new commandments with a finger dipped in spilled cabernet.
a burning menorah hammered out of abandoned aluminum cans.
prophets in hoodies chanting old psalms into broken microphones.
sarah stitching broken promises into blankets made of receipt paper.
old babushkas lifting shopping bags like battle standards.
tired messiahs sleeping under clearance racks.
teenage girls wearing garbage bag wings, trying to fly.
the shekhinah herself flickering between the wine aisles, weeping and laughing at once.
a thousand mezuzahs glued to the checkout counters, crooked and shining.
an old woman chanting hebrew prayers over shopping carts,
teenage girls lighting menorahs made of cigarette butts,
moses himself, leaning against a graffiti wall, rolling his eyes and muttering about lost promised lands.
a busker sets up an altar between two handicapped parking spaces:
he plays the violin with a butcher knife.
he plays hymns made from grocery store announcements and emergency sirens.
i stuff rigatoni into the pockets of my jacket.
i smear marinara across my cheeks like war paint.
i build a crown out of half-crushed soda cans.
a clerk in a shredded apron hands me a receipt the length of the torah:
one broken heel: for the nights you outran your shame.
two-for-one sorrow.
clearance rack forgiveness.
one cracked lipstick: for the prayers you whispered into bathroom mirrors.
half a packet of stolen gum: for the lies you told to survive yourself.
one broken zipper: for the days your own skin didn’t fit right.
five bruised apples: for the g—d(s?) you dared to love and leave behind.
one broken umbrella: for the storms you thought you could outrun.
three crumpled receipts: for the prayers you forgot to say out loud.
half a pack of cigarettes: for the hopes you set on fire just to stay warm.
one chipped nail: for the battles you weren't supposed to survive.
twelve lint-covered candies: for the sweetness you refused to give up on.
one ripped shoelace: for the races you finished bloody.
a cracked compact mirror: for the faces you practiced loving.
one single earring: for the promises you kept even after they stopped shining.
an expired bus pass: for the cities you fled and the ones that never called you back.
a lipstick stump: for the mouths you taught yourself to bless instead of bite.
a bent library card: for the g—d(s?) you found hidden in secondhand stories.
one ticket stub: for the nights you applauded yourself just for staying breathing.
an empty packet of cheap instant coffee: for the mornings that tasted like burnt hope but still counted.
a bloodstained wristband: for the hospitals you escaped without leaving your laughter behind.
it wraps around my waist three times and hisses:
"bless your broken shopping carts. bless your tired g—d."
the thrift store g—d is back, eating from a bag of marshmallows with her hands,
she hands me a duct-taped bible missing half its pages,
where genesis is just a list of lost girls’ names,
and lamentations is just a directory of all the bruises nobody kissed better.
i stagger past a rack of clearance dreams:
one size fits nobody.
final sale, no returns.
tagged with sticky notes that read: "DO NOT PRAY BACKWARDS."
somewhere, somewhere inside the building,
a trumpet blows.
not for war.
for supper.
for survival.
a new exodus begins:
girls with wine-stained mouths,
girls carrying busted jars of hope,
girls limping, singing, laughing themselves hoarse.
the pasta aisle collapses.
the carts grow wings.
(the elders say once there were carts that lifted off the ground, wings stitched from old plastic bags, carrying the prayers of all the checkout girls who never made it out.)
the bottles of wine pop open by themselves and pour into the gutters like sacrament.
i stand in the middle of it:
rigatoni falling from the sky like plague hail;
hail made of forgotten birthdays
rivers of spilled soda and broken jewelry, lost engagement rings
lice hatched from old receipts and grief
flies stitched from cigarette ash and broken promises
disease blooming from unsent letters and unpaid therapy bills
boils in the shape of old nicknames you never outran
locusts swarming with barcodes and clearance tags
frogs croaking old breakup songs through busted speakers
darkness stitched from clearance racks and shuttered storefronts
the death of first dreams, heavier than all the others
and i open my arms.
—
AND THEN:
the eighth-grade prophets return, barefoot and furious,
dragging the tanakh behind them like a wounded animal.
they cut the sky open with safety scissors.
they staple stars to the darkness.
they staple my name to survival.
they staple pasta recipes into psalms.
they sing:
"and lo, the girl with the marinara warpaint shall inherit the earth, or at least the loyalty card points."
they sing:
"and blessed is she who survives the checkout line, for hers shall be the kingdom of takeout and rebellion."
they sing:
"and woe unto the clean-faced, the neatly carted, for they have never eaten pasta alone in a parking lot, and thus have never truly lived."
they sing:
"mark yourself with spilled wine and stubborn prayers.
bless yourself with sauce and salt and survival.
sing the old psalms rewritten in barcode and broken glass."
—
i laugh until i vomit hope onto the concrete.
i spin until the rigatoni in my pockets falls like broken teeth.
i dance until the asphalt bleeds forgiveness.
i eat the moon like tasting psalms.
i drink the wine rivers dry.
i immerse myself in clearance stickers and spilled spaghetti sauce.
and the thrift store g—d claps.
and the eighth-grade angels roar like dying stars.
and the rigatoni crown slips down my forehead and cuts me a little and i let it.
and the receipt around my waist catches fire but i don't put it out.
i survive.
i survive.
i survive so ugly it looks like worship.
and the lights flicker.
and the sky rips open wider.
and i do not flinch.
and i do not beg.
and i do not apologize.
and now:
neon liturgy
"hear, o survivors!"
bless the bruised pasta aisle.
bless the girl who licked wine from her own wounds.
bless the checkout clerks who never made eye contact.
bless the expired yogurts.
bless the pomegranate seeds in your pocket.
bless the cracked mirrors that dared to tell you you were holy.
bless the broken shoelaces.
bless the girls who never came back from the parking lot.
bless the checkout scanners that didn’t beep when you tried to steal back your dignity.
bless the bruised knuckles that knocked on locked doors anyway.
bless the forgotten girlhoods folded into clearance bins.
bless the receipt ink that smudged but refused to vanish.
bless the parking lot salt that seared your feet into remembering.
bless the empty pockets heavy with want.
bless the crooked teeth.
bless the bruised tongues that still learned to sing.
bless the receipt paper cutting your fingers into remembering.
bless the potholes and the pit stops and the prophets disguised as cashiers.
bless the shopping carts abandoned mid-aisle like silent prayers.
bless the midnight parking lots that gave you a place to become unholy and still beloved.
bless the angels with plastic bags for wings.
bless the broken barcode hymns stitched into your ribs.
bless the broken carts that tried to carry all of tikkun olam on rusted wheels.
bless the receipts stitched into scrolls of unfinished repair.
hail the thrift store g—d who carries stolen lip gloss.
hail the rigatoni crown.
hail the warpaint sauce.
hail the midnight prophets who stitched psalms from price tags.
hail the barefoot angels crowned in clearance stickers.
hail the daughters who danced barefoot across broken glass.
hail the shopping carts that became arks of rebellion.
hail the receipt-paper prayers whispered under flickering lights.
hail the old songs humming between freezer aisles.
hail the stubborn bloodlines of bruised girlhoods.
hail the cracked mirrors that remembered our faces.
hail the neon halos worn by broken prophets.
hail the milk crates that bore our sacred junkyard torahs.
hail the salt-stained prayers that no mouth dared to silence.
hail the glitter-stained commandments rewritten in back alleys.
hail the mourning that refused to go quietly.
hail the hands that stitched broken psalms into survival.
hail the mouths that sang even after being told to shut up.
hail the receipts long enough to wrap the world twice.
hail the g—d hiding in the clearance aisle, laughing and weeping both.
hail the cracked parking lot holy enough to hold our hurt.
hail the girls who carried the ruins like holy scrolls.
hail the burnt prayers that stitched us back together.
hail the unfinished psalms still written on our tongues.
hail the broken covenant we carried like a torch.
hail the world still waiting to be repaired.
curse the master’s house and salt the earth.
curse the full-priced salvation.
curse the apology stitched into every aisle.
curse the master's clearance rack.
curse the clearance rack altars.
curse the barcode g—d(s?) who scanned us without mercy.
curse the apologies stitched into barcode stickers.
curse the clean hands that never knew hunger.
curse the clean g—d(s?).
curse the polished aisles that pretended not to see.
curse the locked doors and smiling lies.
curse the forgetting of broken girls.
curse the silence that buried their names.
curse the stitches into the prayers that rebuild the world.
curse the salt of our survival that water the roots of the evil.
curse the cracked covenant that tried to erase our hunger.
curse the world built without deeds of lovingkindness.
curse the walls that crushed the last unanswered halakha.
curse the courts that called miracles heresy.
curse the broken steps that led us away from mercy.
curse the empty heavens that demanded we stay silent.
curse the dust that covered the shattered words at sinai.
mark yourself in clearance stickers.
bless yourself in spilled cabernet.
sing yourself in loneliness turned louder than sirens.
eat the bread of being misunderstood.
drink the wine of g—dless hunger.
sing the hymn of the receipt that refuses to fade.
crawl through the burning parking lot.
bite the moon.
bleed psalms.
and if you survive,
and you will survive,
you must bless yourself.
you must bless your brokenness.
you must curse your brokenness.
you must hail your brokenness.
amen.
amen.
amen in lowercase only.
—
then the rigatoni splits open at my feet
and from inside slither the names i tried to forget:
girls who kissed g—d on the mouth and spat out gravel,
girls who bled rosaries onto gym floors,
girls who slipped wine into the cracks of their mirrors and prayed it into oceans.
the eighth-grade prophets shriek a new gospel:
"blessed be the parking lot martyrs!"
"blessed be the girls who immersed themselves in bargain bins!"
"blessed be the ones who survived the fluorescent fires with marinara in their mouths!"
and the parking lot becomes an ark of exiles,
bearing away the last survivors of the aisle floods.
the carts turned to an ark stitched with promises,
dragging our salted prayers into the cracked horizon.
the oil stains become rivers.
the carts gather themselves into a procession,
creaking and holy,
and i climb inside one,
crowned in canned peaches and rigatoni vines,
and float on the neon flood.
—
the neon flood:
and the security alarms sing a new liturgy:
"unauthorized salvation. unauthorized survival."
"return to aisle seven for your exorcism."
but i do not return.
i ride the current of receipt-paper prayers.
i sail into the belly of the broken mall g—ds,
my body stitched with clearance stickers and holy profanity.
the thrift store g—d throws handfuls of plastic rhinestones at my head, shouting:
"bless your cracked feet, pilgrim."
"bless your back-pocket psalms."
"bless your hunger so wide it chews through heaven."
eve tosses me the bitten pomegranate.
moses folds me an escape map out of wine-stained receipts.
david beats the drums with empty rigatoni boxes.
and above it all:
the sky ripping wider, wider, a scream without end.
the eighth-grade angels trace my survival into the constellations.
with supermarket sparklers and glitter glue.
—
and THEN:
the checkout lane becomes a confession booth.
i lay down my sins:
one bottle of cheap red,
one box of rigatoni,
one heart bruised blue with girlhood.
i take bread in pasta water and regret.
i spit out my receipts like tongues of flame.
i kick open the automated doors with g—dblood on my face.
and when the fluorescent stars finally go dark—
when the parking lot swallows its own salt—
when the wine rivers run dry and the carts collapse like old bones—
i do not mourn.
i build my temple in the ruins,
brick by broken jar,
stone by scattered psalm,
thread by ragged receipt.
i build a mishkan
from the wreckage,
a sanctuary stitched with old songs
and broken hunger.
i sing:
"this survival is ugly."
"this survival is sacred."
"this survival is mine."
i survive.
i survive.
i survive.
so loud the abandoned aisles echo it back as gospel.
—
"neon incantation, in blood and receipts"
bless the wine rivers.
bless the aisle seven angels.
bless the girls who carried fire in their mouths and pasta in their pockets.
curse the master's clearance rack.
curse the apologies stitched into barcode stickers.
curse the clean hands that never knew hunger.
mark yourself in marinara.
bless yourself in duct tape psalms.
sing yourself in glitter and stubbornness.
kneel in the broken carts.
crawl through the salt rivers.
eat the burnt bread of loneliness.
sing in the voice the mall g—ds tried to steal.
laugh at the ceilings that dared to contain you.
build your ark out of abandoned receipts.
survive.
survive louder.
survive so hard you scare the fluorescent lights back into their sockets.
bless the hunger.
bless the breaking.
bless the beginning.
amen.
amen.
amen in lowercase only.
—
the final neon:
in the name of the girl who wore wine like lipstick,
in the name of the g—d who shoplifted hope,
in the name of the parking lot prophets, barefoot and burning:
bless the broken aisles.
bless the rigatoni thrones.
bless the receipts too long for anyone to carry alone.
hail the girls who crowned themselves in plastic bags.
hail the prophets who stitched psalms into price tags.
hail the angels dragging carts through broken glass.
curse the clean g—d(s?).
curse the clearance rack altars.
curse the locked doors and smiling lies.
mark yourself in spilled sauce.
bless yourself in duct-taped faith.
sing yourself in the hunger no one blesses.
kneel where the carts crash.
pray where the coupons bleed.
stand where the lights flicker and dare them to blink first.
bite the moon.
spit out the apologies.
write psalms in your own spit and shame.
survive like a riot.
survive like a prayer no priest would dare whisper.
survive like your blood sings in barcode.
amen.
amen.
amen in lowercase only.
—
a thousand years later,
a story unfurls within villages in late evenings by old beaches,
a girl, g—d-like, unholy,
leads a weird band of others
bruised girls, broken prophets, thrift store g—d(s?)
out into some unnamed desert.
not to find a promised land.
just to keep walking.
just to keep surviving.
and so we march—
(and somewhere, tucked in a crumbling parking lot corner, a voice older than all of us mutters: it is not your duty to fix this burning world. but it is your duty to walk through it, singing anyway.)
—past the smoking checkout lanes,
past the salt statues and broken price tags,
past the promises nobody kept.
the carts rattle and the asphalt splits and the rigatoni falls like rain,
and we walk barefoot through it,
girls and ghosts and prophets and g—d(s?),
all of us stitched with receipts and burning prayers.
no promised land waiting.
just the singing.
just the stubbornness.
just the holy broken walking forward.
may the broken be lifted.
may the forgotten be remembered.
may the stubborn still dance through the ruins.
may the ruined still build temples out of receipt paper and spit.
amen.
amen.
amen in lowercase only.
- Oizys.
a sacred text for the bruised, the stubborn, the barely-believing,
a living scripture for people who survive ugly and call it holy,
written not in gold,
but in (spilled) wine stains, (sprayed) salt, and (broken) receipts,
and sung with (holy) defiance.
inspired by the writing prompts (vii) by @sammie.jpg333,
not just writing:
forging a myth
in blood, marinara, psalms, and clearance stickers.
this was never about getting saved.
it was about learning to sing with blood still in your mouth.
the inconsistent casing of 'and then' is intentional,
matching the uneven heartbeat of survival,
this survival is sacred.
they are all small caps, because.
they were never bigger than me.
they were never so far above.
keeping everything lowercase
makes the brokenness holy.
it says: nothing is out of reach.
everything is made sacred in survival.
i name them how,
i name myself.
they kneel too.
amen.
amen.
amen in lowercase only.
