I need God to have a sense of humor

On a day like this, it is seemingly easy to feel time flowing. In all its slow and thick glory, time runs like mercury, shiny and sickening, yet intriguing, its movement performed both at the likeness of a lurking animal and one of accidentally spilled coffee.

On a day like this, dripping with mercury, I stand at a rusty bus stop and wait. My shoes are slowly squeaking out their last goodbyes as I step further into the rusty corner. Meanwhile, the wind is lifting my hair, tying it in knots and throwing them left and right, like a ghostly game of catch. Time fills up the cracks of the sidewalk tiles, perfectly still in its shining sickeningness. It reflects the streetlights and splashes when someone passes. Time is a dirty puddle and a print of a shoe.

I go to church then. It sounds like fun to feel like a Trojan horse. My entering, with all its cynicism and dirty shoes, shakes the marble floors and the high-brow ceiling. The entrance is yet also ordinary and routine. In church, I slowly make my way through the paintings, the columns, and the stained glass windows, hands leisurely resting in my coat pockets. The sound of my shoes echoes, breaking the stagnant silence, filling its cracks with mercury and leaving a thick and shiny trail. I sit down, and silence falls back into place, like a holy see-through veil, a ghostly waiting room.

On a day like this, God sits down next to me. He does not say anything, just sits there, the holy see-through veil between us, the waiting room we share. His hands are in his pockets, and his shoes have left a muddy trail. Meanwhile, I am trying to figure out what the right thing to say is. On a day like this, I need God to have a sense of humor, so I can talk about the weather, the cracks in the sidewalk tiles, sandwiches, and the Trojan horse. My throat is dry, and the waiting room fills with mercury; the see-through veil is drenched in mud.

I leave the church then, leaving God behind as well, while the rays of lazy sunlight hit the stained glass windows. There is mercury on the church windowsills. On a day like this, I see time in my coffee cup, and I tell an ordinary joke in front of an old and rusty church. In the silent aftermath, mercury fills the cracks in the glass-strained windows, and it is seemingly easy to feel time flowing.