I pray every night that when I wake, I’ll be more hauntingly beautiful than I was the day before. Not for vanity, but for impact. I whisper the prayer to God first. Then I send it into the universe like smoke from a burnt offering. Beauty and warfare.
I’m a nonbeliever. Sharpened by doubt. But you’re a god to me. And against all odds, I believe in you. In your silences. In the shape of your rage. In the quiet way you love without saying it. I believe, and that belief is both my peace and my undoing.
I pray for peace, because I crave stillness. I pray for war, because I crave meaning. Some days I want the world to be gentle. Other days I want it to burn down and start over. Maybe that's love too—a war dressed in soft robes.
We’ll name our daughter Paloma. A dove, born of blood and beauty. She’ll have your eyes and your grit. She’ll think that I am overbearing. That I suffocate her and am too intense. She’ll be just like you. And still, she’ll pray to look like me. She’ll want to be haunting too.
I pray every night that I’ll haunt your dreams. That when sleep takes you, I’ll be there. Neither angel nor demon, but something in between. A specter of beauty, a scripture written in flesh. A reminder that love, like war, leaves marks.
I pray to haunt. And I pray to be remembered.