Atonement, reparation for an offense
or injury, is unavailable to you, brother.
You can't repay us for how it feels to finally
not care about you or the years it took to
get here. The promissory notes you issued
have depreciated into punch lines. Any more,
I can barely grunt in the flickering spaces
between your apologies. But I'm still watching,
and before you fall I want to tell you I never
liked that definition of atonement, nor the one
that calls it reconciliation of God and humanity
through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ
because I don't find his murder more vital
than his life and, looking at my children,
I don't believe we start off fallen, but rather fall
from exemplifying oneness with God -- and so
must do the patient work of first defining god
and then of finding at-one-ment with it.