Why I Believe in God — as an Atheist

The only real love we know burns if we get too close. God made burning worth it. This pocket of paradise against this indifferent vacuum. God gave us cancer, and the will to fight it. We spit up blood in our callous palms that ignored the signs. The burning signs that whisper from the shadows until they scream and eclipse the truth with our realization – we shiver in its totality, its umbra. Our legs tremble and collapse in the shower, where we ring our head on the toilet, crashing through the curtains. We don't see how, but we wake up in the hospital with a tube in our arm and a throbbing skull. God carried us here. We wince at the fluorescent light. There's a woman next to our bed. She softens the spike. Our eyes focus and we see she's on her phone. We mutter, she notices, stands, walks to us, and flips a switch by our head. God brushes her brown hair over our face, it feels that we're clearing a forest we spent our life traveling but never knew we were in. God poured oaken soul into her eyes, sculpted her delicate smile, her little teeth that cut through our haze. We lay, concussed, but god made us to feel— fully. Even when we’re not thinking. Especially when we’re not thinking. The stiff steel bed only feels like the soft sheets under us. Her auburn warmth holds us against the sterility of the hospital room. Against the muffled sound of the TV in the background— it plays one of our comfort shows. We forget the name. An IV drip ties us down and could be poison or heroin. But we only feel god. When we're knocked on our back, we look to the sky and know what we love. Does God unburden us beyond our sight? God makes us ask, “What’s wrong with me?" She tells us, "not for much longer.” Does she sound sad or patient? It doesn't matter as long as we know love for these moments, however fleeting. She tells us what's wrong. How our cells have been stripped. Our liver and our heart, that there’s no surgery or treatment for our rotted DNA… She stops, looks down at us, and pushes up a smile. She doesn't want to waste any more of our time. We miss her already. She asks us "do we believe in miracles?” We shake our head. She says “that’s ok.” She stands and gives us a kiss on the cheek. Then, we see our dying cells, feel our wireframe bed, these plastic walls; and then our perfect paradise, our respite from the frozen, radioactive, wasteland. Our sun burning to light our way forward, or rot our cells that feed our flesh to the soil to fertilize a new seed for a new heart. But, not our heart. The sun winds us around its spirit forever. Until, it expands and swallows us all. When we return to the fire we were forged in, before the sun sheds its weight too. Its carcass sews the void, ripe to sprout new children. A fertile field of radioactive offspring, ready to shower, desolate worlds with – love. Beautiful, cancerous, love. God is not for us. God is with us. It is not a he, where. It's what's here. So, I don't believe all this was designed. I believe it happened by chance, and we are even luckier because of it. That there's nothing greater than what is here— and there doesn't need to be. Because the privilege to Love is the greatest God we ever know. Even though we die right after.