Since You Left Me

by Allen Zadoff

  I say it again. Out loud in the empty synagogue.

  “God.”

  The space feels less empty.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Not because things worked out, because they didn’t. I pretty much got screwed on the Mom and Judi Jacobs front. And I won’t be graduating from B-Jew. So I really can’t thank you for that.”

  My leg is falling asleep. I move on the pew, shift from one butt cheek to the other.

  “And I can’t thank you for this pew, which is hard and hurts my tuchas.”

  The eternal flame flickers. I wonder if God is pissed at me for saying tuchas in synagogue. Maybe he hates that I used a slang term for ass, or maybe he loves that I spoke Yiddish at all. But I can’t believe in a God like that, one who hates or loves according to an obscure set of rules. I have to believe in one I can say anything to. I can tell him the truth, I can be myself, and he doesn’t blink.

  “I can’t thank you for making things work out, but maybe I can thank you for being with me while they didn’t.”

  Was God with me?

  I close my eyes and think about it for a while. I don’t get any answers.

  Instead of pushing through and trying to figure it out, I hold the question in my head like the guru taught me. I sit with it. I sit with the idea of God.

  After a while I look at my phone. A half hour has passed. I think it’s the longest I’ve ever been in a synagogue voluntarily.

  I should leave now, but I don’t want to.

  I want to stay.

  I want to sit with God a little longer.