the sky is plain white and i’m thinking about God again

I gazed upon the midwintery sky through my misty window, all fogged up with humidity, little droplets of water bundled in its corners. It was plain white, and stretched on, never-ending. It made me think about God again. Faith. However convoluted. Faith never left when I did. Even miles away, I carry my grandparents’ prayers in my spine. Angel of God, my Guardian dear…

Faith reached me before I ever understood what it was asking of me. In my grandparents' house, God was not an idea but a presence; quiet, watchful, woven into the day. We prayed before we ate, before we slept, before leaving the house, as if nothing was safe without permission. Saints lined the walls, their eyes followed as I grew older, their faces familiar long before I learned my own. No one ever told me to be afraid, I just learned how to be still. 

I remember kneeling on the varnished timbre of my bedroom floor, its rough edges pressing into my knees, palms folded too tightly as if they could hold my prayers in place. The heat of the evening pressed through the thin curtains, sticking my dress to my arms, and I could feel the faint scent of incense lingering from Mass hours before. Every movement, every glance was measured, a test I didn’t yet understand. I learned then that stillness was a kind of virtue, that patience was a kind of faith, and that endurance; whether in prayer or in silence, was the only way to be right. 

It lingers. Like God had trailed, and now living within the walls. He's sat on the shelves, watched from frames, and followed me from room to room. Observant, and guarded. Some nights, I would lie awake in the darkness of my bedroom, listening to the deafening silence of the village. Repeating the prayers I had learned by heart, my lungs carried the weight of every Hail Mary, every whispered Glory Be. Yes, I was too young to know what God had asked of me, yet I remember the gravity of pressing down like the humidity, like the mountains pressing close around my hometown. I could still feel it, as a residue- the quiet insistence of a faith that raised me before I had language for myself. 

It sits in my chest, the way heat and light swam on the streets of the town. The trees looming like quiet sentinels, church bells split the thick air of humidity at noon. My body remembers it ripple through the walls of our home, threading through the prayers whispered before meals. Bless us, O Lord… Our neighbours’ houses were shadowed, silent. Yet, I imagined their eyes tracing my movements, remembering every child who had ever passed their windows. Ever so watchful.

Sometimes I pause mid-step, or hold my fork a fraction too long and I realise it’s a habit I carried from my grandparents’ table, but it coils in my knees, it presses in my spine. The quiet reverence, learnt long before I understood what it meant, still nestled in my bones. The prayers I outgrew echo in odd corners. In hushed evenings, the stretch of white skies, the smell of rain hitting soil. And for a moment, I feel as though I am both at home and a stranger in my own body. It is a faith that no longer belongs here, yet refuses to leave, like heat pressing against a closed window. 

I watched the skies stretch on and on. So white, so pure and unmoving. No wonder I'm thinking about God. I tried to reconcile with it so many times. It's not so much about the doctrines, not the rules, but the care, and devotion, the urging silence and endurance. I might be miles away from my hometown and that house that shaped me, yet the remnants haunt me like a ghost trapped in this world. Its stillness, the unspoken warnings, and the way my body remembers how to bend without breaking. It's misplaced, and perhaps that's where the truth lies for me. Faith. However convoluted. Is no longer a commandment but a whisper interwoven into my own making, a quiet pulse I still carry even when I no longer kneel.