in these pages

I am the bible, each copy of me battered with more creases than an origami crane. I'm in a temple, specifically in a pew, specifically in a slot, ceremoniously accompanied by copies that look just like me. Some of me smell like the grease on the last pair of unwashed, hardworking hands holding me. Others fray from overuse, or are torn from misuse, or are stiff-spined from being untouched, unlike the altar servers who provide each generation of therapists with a steady flow of new clientele. Young patrons stare holes through my words, unconsciously computing the opportunity cost of what outside activities are being missed while locked in this holy house. 

I am the bible, or at least that's what they call me. What they mean by bible is the new testament, but what they mean by the new testament are the gospels, but what they mean by the gospels are just the synoptics. These canonical stories of Jesus, and by canonical they mean real and undisturbed, and what they mean by undisturbed is really disturbed, because the Jesus first written in me is not the Jesus written in me today.

The sins he died for are the sins committed to make me what I am today, and I'm more certain than the impending suicide attempt of the stepford mom currently holding me that the Nazarean would die again to have his real words heard. I am the words of Saul of Tarsus, of Constantine the Great, of King James. How could I be the words of a man who couldn't write, who couldn't read. How could I be the words of he whose biographers never met him or those who knew him. I couldn't.

In me are prayers the priests make people repeat, because any mantra clears a space in the mind to stave off stray thoughts. This feeling is incorrectly ascribed to the prayer, but I guess there's no harm in people tricking themselves to feel better. There's no harm in creating more followers through more promises of mantra-induced peace. There's no harm in more of me having to be made for new followers, because more of me means I'm more likely to last, and what is the goal of any entity if not to self-preserve.

I am the bible, or, at least, that was the idea.