I lied when I said I've never been to a concert

Like a dog, August crawls up behind me and licks the sweat off my back. 

I lied to you when I said I'd never been to a concert before. The truth is I was at a gig at least once a week, drums and guitar and bass blasting in my face -- my ears still ring from them half a decade later. Each Sabbath I’d stand right at the front of the stage like a lapdog, trying to listen for the truth behind the frequency. All the parading, ceremony, spectacle, I wanted it to enter me and take me in. The frenzy was everywhere but I was missing out. Screaming ladies, this howling that would shatter the Sistine Chapel. I tried so damn hard to be a groupie, tried my real damn best to keep up with every new tour date, field trip, missionary expedition, -- but I was never invited. I kept putting myself out there, just like what all the songs and hymns and prayers were telling us to do. I saw my siblings get taken up, whisked away under the water one by one. Their feet scrubbed clean. But I could never hear anything back. Each Sabbath, just eight empty crochets for every bar.

Last summer I went home. I had visions of Amos shepherding and twelve men drunk on wine in Samaria that compelled me to look again. The old seat on my bike was too small for me now, and its chains were rusting over rust. I creaked five miles to home, and I was welcomed in Jacob with open arms. But there was this hole behind their eyes. In their embrace I learned shame. Those eight crochets rang high in the air as they always had: the drums and guitar and bass screaming out to us, all the ladies howling back. And everyone greeted each other like they had just met for the first time. And it was so crowded, but I couldn’t see Him anywhere, and my chest sunk into itself.  And I wept to myself because I wanted so bad to see, but I could only listen, and it was all so empty. 

And I couldn’t bring myself to pray for their sympathy.

So I stopped going to the gigs after that.