Our Brothers & Sisters Are Leaving Too Soon

Our brothers & sisters are leaving too soon. Their names arrive before breakfast, glowing from
the small blue screen I keep turning facedown. I try to hold them all—every face, every story,
every life this world was not gentle enough to keep. & the worst part is, I understand. There are
mornings I wake already tired of being here, when the sun feels like another thing I am expected
to survive, when the mirror holds more ghosts than my own reflection. Sometimes, I wish I could
have walked with them—not because I want to die, but because I hate the thought of anyone
crossing that kind of dark alone. I imagine us barefoot at the edge of whatever comes next, my
hand finding theirs, saying, I know. I know. But I stay. Somebody has to remember how they
laughed. Somebody has to speak their names without turning them into headlines. Somebody
has to keep a little light burning where they once stood. So tonight, I light the candles. I say
each name my mouth can carry & ask this world how many of us must become memory before
it learns how to let us live.

For Those Who Wrestle With God

Are we the ones You call chosen—
those who carry grief like gospel,
who still approach the altar
when every prayer has returned
with its mouth closed?

Father,
I stretch my hands
but cannot stop them trembling.

I whisper hallelujah
through teeth clenched with doubt,
offering praise with a pulse
that will not settle.

You say fight the good fight.
But my knuckles are purple & bruised,
my spirit limps like Jacob
into morning.

Is this what it means to be chosen—
to leave the dark
with a blessing in one hand
& a wound in the other?

I have screamed into pillows
like prophets into caves,
lit candles in rooms
too dark to breathe in,
waited for burning bushes
that never caught.

All I ever wanted
was a God who listened back.

Tell me—

do You grow tired
of watching us break?
Of watching us stitch our wounds
with psalms
while blood keeps blooming
beneath our Sunday clothes?

I know You are there.

But sometimes
You are too quiet.

Too far.
Too much like the father
I once begged to stay.

Still,
I wrestle.

Still, I return—
shoulders heaving,
lungs crowded
with praise & protest.

Perhaps this is faith:
not leaving
when heaven refuses
to answer.

Jacob entered the dark
with two good legs.

By morning,
God had given him
a new name
& a limp.

I keep thinking
about the limp.

How the body remembers
what the blessing
cost.

So if You must touch me,
touch the place

I have spent years
trying to hide.

Let me leave this night
changed, but not silent.

Let my trembling hands
reach anyway.

Let morning find me
still holding on—
not healed,
not certain,
but here.

*

Dr. Darius Phelps (he/him) is the author of My God’s Been Silent (Writ Large Press, 2026) and The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh (Kith Books, 2026). His work has been featured or is forthcoming in beestung, Frozen Sea, wildness, Diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Matter Monthly, Cultural Daily, Een Magazine, School Library Journal, and many more.  He lives in Brooklyn, NY.