Search for God

I searched for god
in temples, churches, mosques—
on knees bruised by prayer,
with lips trembling
from verses i barely understood.

i lit candles
until the wax melted
like my hope.
i fasted,
thinking hunger
would bring me closer.

i drank holy water
that didn’t quench
the thirst in my soul.

i asked statues
to speak.
they stayed still.
and so did the ache.

i stood beneath stars,
yelling into the dark,
asking
why the silence hurt more
than the noise ever did.

i gave up sleep
to chase peace.
i wrote letters
to a god
that never wrote back.

but god
didn’t meet me there.

i found god
in the cracked palms
of a rickshaw driver
giving up his meal
for his child.

in the girl
who stitched her dreams
into broken clothes
and still laughed
like she didn’t know
how much she was falling apart.

in the trembling voice
of my mother
when she called me “my child”
even when i felt
like nothing.

in the boy
sitting on a hospital bench,
holding his father’s hand
like it was the only thing
keeping the world together.

i found god
in the softness
of a dog sleeping
beside a homeless man,
sharing warmth
without asking for anything back.

i found god
in a handwritten note
from a friend
that read:
“you don’t have to be strong today.”

i found god
in my own mirror
on the day
i looked at my scars
and didn’t hate them.

in the stranger
who smiled
at my silence,
as if to say—
“i see you,
even when you don’t speak.”

god was in the pauses,
in the parts of me
that refused
to give up
even when i begged them to.

god was not
the answer i wanted.
god was the question
that kept me alive.

and maybe
god is just
the way people stay
even when they have
a hundred reasons to leave.

maybe
god is love—
the real kind,
the quiet kind,
the kind that doesn’t need
to be proven.

and now,
i no longer look for god
in places.

i look
in moments.
in people.
in myself.

because maybe,
god was never lost—
i just had to open
the right kind of heart
to find them.