Last week I drove past a century-old church that I knew from experience was made of sticks and stones and words that hurt me, and I saw a sign advertising a Holy Spirit Garage Sale—which made me wonder what gently used things God would be looking to get rid of to make a little cash.

I would have talked about this with you. I would have sent you a picture of the plastic yard sign, so yellow and sharp-edged, alongside some musing about God’s cluttered garage packed full of boxes of long-unanswered prayers and his dusty, cob-webbed attic scattered with Jesus’s first-century toys—a rusty hoop and a stick made of cypress wood, or a tarnished trumpet Jesus once enjoyed then abandoned and God has been saving for the announcement of the end of days.

You would have cracked so many jokes, something like “factory outlet souls: buy one get one free” or “10 commandments for the price of 7” or “burial shroud, as is, used only three days.” But you stopped talking to me months ago.

You never read my last text, just dropped your vicious words at my door and walked away as though a backward glance might turn you to salt. Ten years of soul-baring friendship left to desiccate and become dust.

Or maybe you’re still out there, not too far removed, keeping your head just above water like an ark navigating a violently flooded world, waiting for a dove to gift you an olive leaf despite its feathers plucked bare.

Either way, I hope the God you don’t believe in is treating you kindly, I hope you find some good yard sales, and I hope you know I’m still driving in circles and thinking of you. Everything must go.

Megan Hanlon is teaching sentences how to fly. Her words have appeared in The Forge Literary Magazine, Gordon Square Review, Reckon Review, Variant Literature, Cowboy Jamboree, and more. Her blog, Sugar Pig, is equal parts tragedy and comedy. She is currently querying a memoir-in-flash about the meaning of home. Find her on social media at @sugarpigblog.