I always think about god even though I’m not religious and maybe it’s because I’m baptized

 I was like a pillar.

I sat in the church pew and marveled at the order, did people take the pens and pencils home sometimes? Did someone have to come and replace all the little pencils and branded pens every day? Who made the pens? Who put the little sticker on them with the Presbyterian name? Everyone’s ears were glowing. The light was showing me their ear veins and earring holes, their folds folds. I stood in another church before this, Catholic, and listened to a singing song come out of little speakers in the lobby. I looked sort of shifty, my face poking through the warped yellow glass, trying to find the man who was singing, the organ that was playing. There were people standing facing forwards and the front was empty. No man, empty organ, empty organs. A woman approached the other side of the glass from me, gestured to come in. I shook tight smiled. There was a line of people out into the lobby, a man in the line was singing along to the hymn, was this him? Was he micd up and pumped through the speaker? His voice was lower than the disembodied song, he was waiting in line for the confessional. It was Saturday night, I drank hard fast in the park and watched people making out on the long bench next to me. I cried on the empty bus, my $2 confessional, and thought: can the autonomous vehicle out there to my left watch me crying? If alone and crying inside an autonomous vehicle, is it like church? Is the vehicle like priest? Like disembodied song on the speaker? The bus driver is closer to god than any of this.