The Strange Love of a Strange God

Off I’d run in my socks, through the kitchen, up the stairs into my bedroom, and into the closet, with coats half stuffed into my mouth, so that no noise would get out. To this day, I don’t know how “positive thinking” works when, scientifically speaking, you have no chance of surviving. I only know how to plead with God on my knees, and how to invest everything you have in your belief. Everything. That’s what my siblings and I did as we secretly prayed for our father in the attic. “Please perform a miracle. Please don’t let Dad die.”