Sea salt on city streets

yall.

"It is said that mortal life is empty without the love of God. That the ache of loneliness’s wounds is assuaged by obedience to Him, for in serving God we encounter perfect love and are made whole. But if God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if He is three in one in the Trinity, then God knows nothing of loneliness. God knows nothing of standing with his back to a gray morning, of dropping to his knees in the dust. Of his shoulders slumping beneath the new weight of knowing what it meant not to be alone, and an acute awareness of his chest’s own emptiness. God knows nothing of loneliness, because God has never tasted companionship as mortals do: clinging to one another in darkness so complete and sharp it scrapes flesh from bone, trusting one another even as the Devil’s breath blooms hot on their napes."

"I could rationalize this decision away. It was easy, too easy. She was a lost soul who sought help and I gave it, thus was my vocation. I could repeat that sentence like a litany, like a prayer, a meditation of pious deceit, but it still would not change the truth. I was giving in to temptation. Every decision I made that kept me close to her, that offered the opportunity to be close enough to touch her hand or smell her hair, was a sin. I wanted it all the same."

[ID: a person in an astronaut suit reclining on a pink floaty, floating in a pond. The pond has lily pads floating in it.