Dear Sophie

While I was chasing the golden rush of the Japanese sun on a school trip, cradled by a grace I mistook for divine, you lay where mercy didn't reach — in your bitter, muted room. Your stillness was too complete for sleep, too absolute for the world to intervene.

Just close your eyes

The sun is going down

Mrs D told me there was nothing I could've done to keep you here — a comforting sentiment at the time, but a cold and cruel one in retrospect. How dare she assume and so easily succumb to the cruelty and inevitability of a divine order?

Echoes of that sentiment hum through the pressed faces of my pious peers when I tell them of your loss. I hear only complacent sympathies — hesitant filler words meant to balm my unease. How dare they simplify your agony for the sake of my conscience?

I should've flown back to Sydney, sat with your family, offered a hand. But all I had were words I didn't want to believe myself — assurances of a justice that would have only tormented your family more, promises of a heaven you weren't welcome to.

So I kept my distance, eyes fixed upward and away. I turned from your damnation to protect my salvation.

Why did I pledge myself to a man I'd only read about? Why did that cross move me so? I think I mistook the intensity for intimacy, the spectacle for sincerity.

The so-called Man of Sorrows seems less wronged than you were; at least his blood was spilled with purpose — witnessed, sanctified, and sung about for centuries, his suffering then crowned in heaven. The truer fondness was owed to you — bleeding quietly, unseen, without reason, destined to be forgotten and condemned to suffer still.

You'll be alright

No one can hurt you now

I wish I had been braver then — brave enough to grieve you honestly. Instead, I wrapped my sorrow in scripture, praying holy words would muffle my doubt and convince me that your never-ending torture was just and deserved.

I'm sorry I looked away.

If I could go back, I'd sit with you in the darkness and look at you straight on. I'd let your loss haunt me, let it unravel my convictions and sanity, rather than try to archive you in doctrine.

I'm sorry it's taken me this long to say this — and in words you'll never read.

I'm sorry it took me lying here in my own bitter, muted room, where mercy feels far, and the stillness too suffocating for sleep, too absolute for the world to cut through.

I wonder if they'll think of me the same way. Will they come to accept my damnation was justly and rightly decided, by the one whom I can't seem to call Father?

Come morning light

You and I'll be safe and sound