Villainous Poetics: God's Creation
Exploring the tension between being God's creation and the quest for self-identity.
When it’s all said and done,
I know I am God’s creation,
But that knowing does no good
When you don’t know what you were created for.
I am God’s creation,
Or am I God’s mistake?
Why did He create me?
Why am I real?
Whose spot did I take?
Did He mean for me to be here?
After all, I am God’s creation—
My beauties and my faults,
Every inch,
God’s creation,
God’s doll,
God’s monstrosity.
I am God’s creation,
I am what He molded His clay to be,
But I’m nothing He thought I’d be.
What did He think I’d be?
Did God create me,
Or was this someone else’s doing?
I believe I am God’s creation,
But I don’t know a God.
I don’t know who He is,
Who She is, who They are.
But I’m told God’s out there,
He created all the eye can see,
And I’m supposed to believe God created me.
I am God’s creation,
But what does that really mean?
I am just another human being,
Small and futile.
My existence is nonexistence.
See, God, you don’t know me,
And I don’t know you.
Am I God’s creation?
But there is no God who created me?
I am self-made.
God put the clay on the wheel,
But I molded it.
I molded me.
My beauties and my faults,
They’re all mine to own.
And God, do I own them.
You see, I may be God’s creation,
But I created me.
Author’s note:
I wrote this in moments of both great distress and calm, wrestling with my own vulnerability as I placed it on the page. For hours, I debated with myself, unsure whether to share what I had written. Yet, through it all, I remembered a promise I made to myself: to take the important baby steps of actually posting my poetry, rather than keeping it confined to a small, insulated circle of friends. To let myself be judged. To lay my soul bare, showing both its glory and its struggles.
This poem is a chaotic, sporadic reflection of my journey toward self-awareness and the path that lies ahead. Like many children in America, I grew up in the church, raised under a singular belief that I would later come to question—one that society would use to bind me. Even now, I continue to wrestle with my understanding of myself, shaped by that belief and the weight it carried.
But in sharing this poem with you, I hope to invite you into this part of my story, and perhaps even find a bit of resonance with your own. Poetry, to me, is an act of connection, of reaching across the space between us and saying, "I see you." Thank you for reading, and I look forward to sharing more of my poetic musings with you and hope that, in some way, my words bring you comfort, reflection, or inspiration. Enjoy the journey, as we all navigate the paths that have been laid before us.
With love,
j w