Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. My mother is under the impression that my faith in Christianity is still brimming with morale; that you could find me, hands clasped in holy veneration, knees bruised cemented to the floor in utmost divine praise. Along with the majority, I shun the Christian recruiter on the one train as if she’s consummated a holy felony. “Open your heart and your mind to the love of Jesus Christ, our savior, forever and always”, she’s practically begging. She paces up and down the cart, the clamor of commuter transit isn’t enough to move her spirits. “Sir, are you prepared to let Jesus into your heart,” the man pleads silence.

“Ma’am, let Jesus Christ shine the holy light on you and find the truth, find amity”, the train responds with a shrill halt of the brakes and a quaking jerk. Christianity, falling under the umbrella of conservative ethics, ceases to inaugurate itself in a city that anything other than liberal, is taboo. We’d rather enthrall ourselves with constituents of capital, lust, pleasure. We come to the city with intentions of success and wealth, like the generations before us. The American dream that we were promised. We seethe with envy upon the revelation that this fantasy is far from tangible. Don’t you know? Thou shall not covet.

My eyes are shut tight but I know that someone must have cast the recruiter a glance because she’s suffocating them like a serpent. “Are you ready to know the truth, the way? Allow the love of Jesus Christ to guarantee you a place in his kingdom after death”. “No”, is all he says, the first acknowledgment she’s received in the entirety of her efforts thus far. Why do Christians even attempt inducting members into their denomination in a place where the masses openly oppose their doctrines? Perhaps they believe inner city inhabitants are customarily lower income and therefore more susceptible. Gullible in the face of adversity, desperate for any way out of the tribulation of poverty. I’ve found myself committing acts of petty misdemeanor in times of misfortune. Slipping a container of raspberries into my bag, I can hear the pastor of the church my mother used to oblige me to, whisper in my ear, “thou shall not steal”. I laugh. I wonder what his wife would have thought if she heard his decrees of desire; begging me to serve as worship assistant on Christmas Eve because he thought I looked “sexy”, up there on the altar. I always thought it pretty strange how his wife never came for service. Thou shall not commit adultery.

Everybody moves in succession with the jolt of the train. How she stands so tall on her two feet. The power of the divine. The Holy Spirit moves her, moves me, moves something. I’d like to bask in the glory of the spirit. I sink my nails into the red velvet cushioning of the pew I am seated in. Is it the devil in me? I feel vile on the inside. I’ve come today to repent, I wouldn’t be here for any other reason. I want to gag, retch, spew the black mold growing inside of me, spreading like fire with each transgression. How many more lies can I tell, I ponder this as the blood from the pew spews out from under my fingernails. The blood of a virtuoso.

“Would you be willing to accept our lord and savior Jesus Christ into your life and bear the joys of serving in his kingdom forever”, she interrogates me now. Godamnit, I think to myself, irked by her aura. Ah, Ah, Ah. Thou shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. As I sit here on this sweaty, smelly, train, I contemplate the modes of transportation the pope might use. How mere and uncomplicated the convenience of a personal driver must be. The pope, the utmost, regarded figure of secular authority there is, isn’t out here berating people on public trains to join his cult. The most glorified figure of holiness, thou shall not make idols, your holy highness.

The innermost yearn of human continuation is acceptance and power. My mother engrossed herself in our church working her way up through a perverse hierarchy of fabricated authorities and inner circles to be a church deacon. “Jesus is the way, the life, and the truth”, she pleads. The truth. My mother would stay for coffee hours after service to gossip to the other woman about so-and-so being a “tyrant”, this person showing up late for bible study. Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. I thought this was a covenant of virtue?

As we pull in and stop at the next station, the recruiter bellows, “All of you have a blessed day”. I can hear her bellowing again to the next cart, “Ma’am open your heart up to our lord and savior Jesus Christ”. Jesus Christ.

As a being with afflictions of mortality you will never live a life as superlative to that of God, Jesus Christ, Mary, the Holy Spirit. We are corned, existing in a purgatory between Heaven and Hell. I rather, remain suspended in a mist of desolation because there is nothing for me. I am a liar, a cheater, a murderer, a thief. Neither Heaven nor Hell wants me. Purgatory can see right through my opulence, it kicks me to the curb with a loathing so great it bruises my ego black and blue. I deserve nothing. When the Lord commanded, “thou shall not murder”, the millions murdered at the hands of the evangelical, cry out in sorrow. All blood shed for a christian nation, they act in unyielding unison. The Angel of Death will carry them now forever and always. The pious aren’ too perturbed by God’s conceptions I guess.

I am a human, not a saint. Rather, I look inward for conviction. Endowing myself, the utmost figure of secular ascendancy. Thou shall have no other gods before me. The train door closes, I open my eyes to the breach of darkness.