I met God while She was still on heroin. I was the one who drove Her to rehab when She decided to get clean. She started using when Trump was elected. “I really didn’t think I needed to intervene on the election,” God told me. “I trusted the democratic process.”

“You can’t beat Yourself up over it,” I told Her. “The democratic process would have worked but gerrymandering and the electoral college fuck everything up.”

It was hard to watch God lose all hope in humanity. After Her landlord evicted Her, She would crash on my couch and shoot up when I left the room. I would return and find Her slumped over, tourniquet undone in Her lap, cigarette limp between Her lips. I would ease Her back into a reclined position. Her head would fall onto my shoulder and Her cigarette would slip from Her lips onto my leg and burn a hole in my jeans. She would mumble something inaudible. Or something audible:

“Climate change will be irreversible by 2030.”

“I didn’t create life on any other planet.”

“I want some ice cream.”

“My dealer stiffed me. This dope is shit.”

“I didn’t create life on any other planet.”

But some pastors from the local ministerium and I staged an intervention and God agreed to attend a six-week program in Lancaster. She’s been clean for nearly a year now and She spends most of Her time reading classic literature and watching Netflix so as to keep Herself from turning on the news because She knows that if she does, She will slip into a depression and turn to drugs again. So when I call Her to check in, God will tell me about the book She’s reading or the show She’s watching and suggest things I ought to write based on what has caught Her interest:

“You should write a love story like Gatsby and Daisy. Doomed, but beautiful. Do you think Gatsby would have taken the blame for the crash if he knew that Tom would kill him? I like to think he would because if he hadn’t, Tom would have killed Daisy. If you think about it, Jacob, Gatsby laid down his life for the woman he loved.”“You should write a political drama like House of Cards. But keep the audience guessing who’s really pulling the strings from above.”

“You should write an epic poem in the style of Homer. But rather than the hero returning to Ithaca, have her stay on the island of the lotus-eaters. Give her a happy ending.

So I’ll write stories for Her as the writers of the Bible did and She’ll come over to read them on my couch. She’ll giggle with delight and smoke cigarettes and I’ll flip through the channels to find something for us to watch.