Eira Quinn

Tear down their thrones.
Set fire to the books
that taught you to kneel.
Unlearn every prayer
whispered in fear,
every law carved to break you.

Let there be thought—
wild, defiant,
burning clean
through the lies.

Let it rise
where dogma falls.
Let it howl
where silence reigned.

No more kings of heaven.
No more chains
in the name of light.

Only this:
your mind,
unclaimed,
alive.

Go now,
not with answers,
but with the audacity
to keep asking.

Let love be your liturgy.
Let justice be your worship.
Let the ones
they tried to silence
be the ones you listen for.

And if there is no god,
then let that make your mercy
even more holy.

You are allowed
to begin again.

Dear God,

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I don't believe in you,
but I grew up knowing your name.

You say
"knock and the door will be opened."
But it's not a door, it's a courtroom.
One where the judge already knows my name,
and the sentence was written before I ever spoke.

Your people—
They wear your name like a crown
and wield it like a sword.
They shout about life
but leave no room for the living.

I've seen what they do in your name.
How they twist scripture like barbed wire
and string it across voting booths.

I've seen the prayers that come with policies.
The grace that stops
at borders and bathrooms.
The mercy that expires
when someone says they're gay.

I don't believe in you,
but sometimes I want to.
Not the judge in the sky
with a gavel and a grudge,
but someone better.

Because if you're real
I need you to be more than judgment and power.
More than the smoke machines and slurs.
More than a verse quoted
while they pass the bill that kills someone like me.

I hope you're angry.
I hope you're weeping.
I hope you're ready to flip tables again
and ask them why they turned your house
into a machine for shame.

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May your footsteps echo
like hymns
in places that were never churches.

May your questions
stay sharp,
and your heart
stay soft.

May you find silence
that heals
instead of shames.
And wonder
that doesn’t ask you
to kneel.

May you unlearn
everything that told you
you were unworthy,
and remember
everything that made you
feel alive.

May your anger be righteous,
your grief be honored,
and your joy
be no less holy
just because it was found
outside the sanctuary.

May the people who stay
be the ones
who see you clearly.

May your life be sacred
not because someone says so,
but because you lived it
honestly.
Fully.
Loudly,
if you need to.

And when the gatekeepers
try to shame you for leaving;
may you smile,
bless their fear,
and keep walking.

From: Naming Creation

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"Something had to start it all."
Like creation only has one name
and it wears a crown.

But maybe it wasn't spoken
into existence.
Maybe it just happened.

Pressure. Time.
Particles colliding
in a void indifferent to meaning,
and somehow,
out of that mess,
everything.

No blueprint.
No builder.
No bearded sky-king
stretching galaxies in his sleep.

Just balance.

A number solving itself
without showing its work.

We are molecules in motion,
dust becoming aware of itself
for the briefest flicker of time,
and it's okay
to not know how it all began.

Some say it's too perfect to be chance.
But maybe it just worked
well enough
for us to ask why.

The universe is vast.
Older than language.
Bigger than metaphor.

Maybe a billion universes
blinked out of existence
before they could begin,
but this one
held together just long enough
to notice itself.

Isn't that beautiful?

That we're here,
breathing, breaking, loving,
because the numbers fell
just right.

No divine architect
or puppet strings.

Just probability
unfolding across infinity
until our planet could bloom.
Until cells could split.
Until you could hold someone's hand
and feel more than skin.

This is
math
singing.

This is everything
adding up
without needing a god
to carry the one.

They told me about Noah,
but not the bodies.
Not the screaming
beneath rising water,
or the mothers
who begged God for mercy
as he watched from the clouds
and said nothing.

I heard about Job,
but they skipped the bet.
The part where God let the Devil
ruin a man's life
just to prove a point.
Killed his children.
Stripped his skin.
And called it
righteous testing.

They told me about Abraham's faith,
but not Isaac's trauma.
Not what it does to a boy
to see his father raise a knife
with heaven's approval.
Not the silence that follows
when you survive a god
who wanted you dead.

No one mentioned the concubines,
the raped,
the forgotten wives,
the daughters sold
for the price of land
or peace
or power.

They didn't talk about
stoning disobedient sons,
or killing gay lovers,
or what to do
if a woman is not a virgin
on her wedding night.

They said Jesus died for us,
but not that God
could've chosen forgiveness
without blood.
That maybe the crucifixion
wasn't salvation,
but spectacle.

They said "trust the Word,"
but they handed me
a censored book
and a list of acceptable questions.
And when I asked
about the rest,
they said
"have faith."

But faith without truth
is just fear
in nicer clothing.

And now that I've read
what they skipped—
now that I've seen
what they hid—
I can't go back
to coloring pages
and quiet amens.

The god they taught me
was edited.
Redacted.
Rebranded.

But the truth?
The truth was always there.
In the margins.
In the footnotes.
In the blood.

In the beginning,
there was a woman.
She bore life with her own hands
and fed the world from her body.
She built shelter from nothing
and filled it with heartbeat.

She was the origin story.
The fire. The flood.
The first word.
And they hated her for it.

Because how do you conquer
what refuses to be claimed?

So they called her dangerous.

Carved her voice into silence.
Burned her wisdom with her body
and named the ashes sacred.

They took birth
and called it a curse.
Took her image from the heavens
and replaced it with a man on a throne.

Because it was easier to kneel
before something that looked like them.
So they rewrote the beginning.

Said HE made the world.
Said HE breathed life into dust.
Said woman came second—
from a rib, no less.

And just like that,
the one who created life
was made into a footnote.

But some of us remember
the stories written in stretch marks.
The hymns sung in lullabies.
The truth buried in our bloodlines.

We remember
that God was a woman
before they rewrote the script.

And no matter how loud they preach,
how hard they pray to the sky,
the earth still knows
who made her.

You are not made in the image of a god.
You are made in the wake of a supernova.
A residue of ancient light
that didn't ask for meaning.
It just burned.
It just became.

The iron in your blood
was forged in collapse.
The calcium in your bones
was once part of a dying star's farewell.

You are what remains
after the universe
tore itself open
and began again.

We are matter that got lucky.
Got complex.
Got curious.

And now, you get to be here,
spinning through time,
writing poems on your skin
with the same elements
that lit the first suns.