Write Until You Pray

Winner of the 2025 Broad Ripple Review Prize in Nonfiction

I am not worried about praying, because I am not going to stop writing. I am not sensational at writing. I am terrible at praying. If I do not toddle through the Lord’s Prayer in my first wisp of the morning, I fail to have a proper conversation all day. 

I am a magenta hypocrite. I bleed internally when the people I love forget to ask me about me. They spend twenty minutes of our short lives expounding on gutter helmets. I soothe them. I beat my breast under my cardigan. I do not point out that they did not ask about my test results. Then I turn my eyes to heaven and spurt pure self. I do not ask God about God. I do not consider God. I may not talk to God all day, even if God puts daisies on my desk. I am a geyser on my own clock, Old Unfaithful.

I tell my boss he is clever and brave. I tell my mother she is filled with light. I reassure faces on distant screens that goodness, mercy, and memes will follow them all the days of their lives.

I forget to tell God that God is good. I forget to smile in God’s eyes. I yelp “help me’s” and keep typing one hundred thirty words a minute. Answers arrive. I stuff them in my mouth like graham crackers I paid for myself. Crumbs fly everywhere. Sparks fly upward, and I choose plastic night lights. 

I send my cousin a thank-you card for a scrunchy. But I run out of stamps when God puts up with me.

I only pray when I cannot outrun people. I am the Development Director for an animal sanctuary. I am a chaplain without FDA approval. When you talk about animals, people have permission to speak. People hand me half-tubs of kitty litter and tell me they miss their fathers. People drag in contractor bags of used towels and ask if they are good. People ask me to pray for their terriers, their job hunts, and their suspicions that everything loved might live again.

I yelp without ceasing. I have to do it feral, in the moment, or I will forget. Heal Muffin. Comfort Lorraine. Swashbuckle a path through the jungle for Joe. Love these people. That’s what you do. OK. Onward. I am terrible at praying. Just let me get back to work. I don’t have time to talk. God settles into the beat-up armchair, God smiles in my eyes, and God chortles. 

I turn a word in my hand like a turtle shell, giddy to have won the scavenger hunt. “Chortles.” I clasp it to my chest and see signs of life. I bring it home. I put it on the windowsill. I giggle at it every morning while I make coffee. God accepts this as praise. God makes do with my psalms in empty envelopes. The post office knows the address.

I have a fight with my mother and throw myself to the rug in prose. I overdress my guilt in adverbs. I ask for forgiveness, but forget the question mark. I growl lowly, then swagger. I betray my vulgar trust that everything will be okay. I write like I can carry myself down the stairs and back up. God tucks me in God’s rucksack.

I get mugged by God in reverse all day. All I see is my fat wallet. I meet a man who makes medieval swords. I eat a cupcake that justifies the creation of cinnamon. I fall asleep with an orange kitten on my bosom. I receive my mother’s forgiveness. I raise my eyebrows and decide I am not hideous. I make the bank teller laugh. I cannot run to my pen fast enough to tie down the thundering horde of joys. God knows when I am writing about God. I realize later, if at all. 

I batter myself against the world and bleed from my temples. I am too small to write for peace. I dream of Ukraine and Gaza. I insult the existence of poetry and backspace the entire exercise. God hits “save” just in time. God reads love. God is love.

God is love, so there is hope I may someday pray. I envy swans and seraphs who write real benedictions. They accept the sleepless Eye’s invitation. They pray and they write. They do both. It can be done.

I am only a mud sparrow. I am the last half-inch of ink in a dollar store pen. I am insecure and impudent. I expect my writing to pray, even when it forgets the Name. 

I can’t steam the wrinkles from my paragraphs. They sleep on the subway and belch opinions. They are heretics who drink too many exclamation points. They single-space their pride and make the font too small for anyone to read but God. God is not worried. God does not wipe the crumbs from my lips. I am not worried either.

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About the Author

Angela Townsend works for a cat sanctuary. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review's 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, The Iowa Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Trampset, among others. She graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and Vassar College. Her poet mother is her best friend.