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unbelieve (excerpt)

poems on the journey to becoming a heretic

Marla Taviano

Look Inside

contents

let’s do this

once upon a time

loving the poor

so many questions

quite literally

backsliding

disapproval

fight club

girl power

manifest destiny

racism

hell no

queer affirming

are you there, god?

disowned

cheated

unbelieving

deconstruction

what now?

notes

appendix a: an apology to Democrats (and Jesus)

appendix b: garbage books

appendix c: the intersection of racism and christianity

appendix d: more books!

appendix e: affirming gay marriage

appendix f: other books I’ve written

acknowledgments

RHE

when Rachel died on May 4, 2019, I

cried for days—for her family and friends

for all of us who loved her and depend on

her words and will never get any new ones

 

two years later, something makes me think

of her and my breath catches in my throat

 

my chest constricts as I realize all over again

that she’s gone and never coming back

 

in the weeks after she died, I re-read all

of her books and I knew what I had to do

 

I had to get these thoughts into words on

paper and this book out into the world

 

I had to

 

it took me a minute but here she is

 

humdrum

for 4 years, okay 5, now 6

I try to write a book about

 

my shifting faith

my unraveling beliefs

my evolving understanding

 

my blah blah blah blah blah

highlight delete highlight delete

 

reading my own story

should light me up

not put me to sleep

 

bless his heart

my dad

wants me to write

a blog post

detailing all of my

theological beliefs

and why

I believe them

so I can put an end

to the confusion

and people can

stop calling me

a heretic

 

saturated market

on the one hand

 

you have everyone

and her sister writing books

 

about their deconstruction

but on the other

 

I have friends who told me

just yesterday

 

“Marla, you are the only person

I feel safe talking to about this”

 

so I guess there’s room

for one more book

 

long story short

scrapped my wordy drawn-out

deconstruction saga

 

and swapped it out for

angsty poetry

 

not happening

a big part of what I’ve

learned over the past 10

 

years is how to sit in the

discomfort and tension

 

of not knowing, of not yet

arriving, of imperfection

 

but to pretend that I can take

10 years of

 

agonizing

reading

crying

praying

learning

unlearning

banging

 

my head against the wall, cram

it into 200 pages and think

 

my readers will arrive at the

same point I did just like that?

 

unthinkable

 

inspo hits like water drops

I used to think

I thought in

Facebook posts

while I was standing

in the shower

but now I realize

they were poems

 

read between the lines

when everyone

wants you to

explain yourself

poetry

is

an act of

resistance

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