The sight doesn’t sit well with me. All I can think of is him whimpering for forgiveness at the foot of the altar in New Nazareth, the wounds on his back weeping blood, so lost he wouldn’t answer even when I laid my hands on him and said his name.

Here, now, I stop in the threshold and gently call, “Theo?”

He doesn’t open his eyes, but he says, “Back already? My supplies will last me another few days at least.”

I shuffle my feet. No, they won’t. I hate that he thinks I’d only come back to keep him from going hungry.

“Bad day,” I explain. “I just wanted to see you.”

He pats the spot next to him. Still not looking. Every eye of the nest turns to me instead, mouths opening and closing as if beckoning. I do as they ask, sitting beside Theo on the pew, and Theo settles a hand on my leg and goes right back to praying.

I managed to find solace in prayer. I found respite in it, even if I had to force it. It’s a chance to step away from everything for a little bit, in a way I couldn’t get even when I was with Theo. I could follow along with the reverend’s chant, my own silent words, or the prayers I memorized down to their bones, and forget everything else. It was just me, the words, and the air in my lungs.

The problem is, I always felt like I was talking to myself.

All the other Angels talked about their personal relationship with God and Jesus. How prayer was a conversation with their savior. How they took the spirit inside themselves and knew the Lord was listening. Even when I was little, before New Nazareth and the Angels, Mom would take me to church and say, Can you feel it, baby girl? Isn’t it glorious?

I tried to feel it. I did, I swear. I reached for it, squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could and begged for it. I pretended I was stretching my hands out into the darkness behind my eyelids, fingers splayed wide, trying to find even the barest touch of something out there in the abyss. To feel the warmth Mom always assured me was waiting once I accepted God into my heart.

There was nothing. Always nothing.

Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe you’re not supposed to feel that touch—maybe it’s always been a metaphor. God is an absent parent who demands loyalty despite never coming around, and I just have to keep throwing my prayers into nothing and trust He gets them. Or maybe I am just too broken to feel Him in the first place.

So instead of prayer being a conversation, it became something else. A time to myself. A time to relax, to center, to set things right.