for life to be kind, for me to love at any cost, for me to take control, for me to trust the way the wind blows. on one hand, i know to believe in the miracle, what's meant to be will be, but i also want to take my story by the throat, demand the world of it. it's exhausting to be filled with hope, then turn the other cheek, have to be the bigger man, as it crumbles. remember the last time you looked around, the spark tingling your skin, in awe of all that surrounds you. was it the prideful vengeance of a scorned woman taking what she's earned, or were you noticed by something powerful? i haven't decided which would make me more bitter, more thankful.

GIVEAWAY

hey all, I'm hosting a giveaway on my instagram account. i'm looking to give away a book of mine to 5 people (you choose which one). you can find me on christina.hopp.

Book Covers and Photos are by my incredible and talented designer, Karen Da Costa.

No, I don't think so. I still pray, and Jesus is Lord, not just a prophet from our history. When this is trained to you from the womb, it is in your blood. It is truth, it is reality, it is as real and close as the clothes on my back, there is no question about it. It's actually kind of torturous. It's like my mind is caged. How do people have a voice in their head that a perfect Creator can't hear? Who do you talk too? Every thought goes to God, and is directed at God, even though I asked for space. The self-awareness is punishment, not enlightenment, how am I acting, am I being good, is God liking what He's seeing, but wait, I don't care anymore, what will hell be like, after all those years of devotion He'd send me to hell?, wait I don't believe in hell. It's inescapable. So I gave up on that. I found a peace to allow us to be who we are. A woman who is trapped to believe in a God who may or may not be who she was trained to think He is. I'm at peace. We are something undefined. I guess while I am stuck on this side of the spiritual plane, I can accept that.

My digital footprint is hard to face. My Christian writing always received more attention than my other work. I still have strangers messaging me about my first poetry book about God. My mom bought 40 copies when it first published. How am I supposed to show my newer work?

And what am I supposed to do, trash a book that touches other people? I'm so thankful readers support the work, even if it wasn't written by my current self. I have to find a love for my past selves, to accept what is out there with my name on it that I can never remove.

october 26, 2023

the grace I hold for myself

could win wars.

when it's just my voice

in the room

and the mighty big god

is gone, the peace is real,

touchable, defined

because it's mine.

I must go every day

speaking to my inner child,

peace, it's okay, hush,

take up space here.

she doesn't understand yet.

the war wages on.

the sounds of laughter

are close by.

the luxury of wishing I was smaller.

this one step into the oblivion, I would kill for.

to be someone he would love, I'd have to be ripped open and sewn back in,

contort myself to perfect posture,

change the genetics of how my body forms,

and stretch my skin until it smoothens.

I'd have to travel back in time to teach myself

sex at a normal age and warn her about

the dangers of side-sleeping.

I'd avoid anything with salt so that rings fit my fingers and

stop trying to be vegetarian, because soy makes me bloated

and I'd have to give up baking because we all know where that ends up.

I can't wait to be pretty, but even then,

I have to find a way to pass all the tests, smile correctly

and know what to say. ask the right questions but also sense when to stop

talking and do more than enjoy the dim orange light of my room

and the books on my shelf. I have to actually like moving

and laugh, but not too hard, and magically stop the headache

that comes on after I've listened to someone talk for too long.

I'd need more hours in a day so that I can recharge on time to

be normal all over again for the next, and

I need to do all of this while being pretty enough for him.

but it would help to be smaller, to shrink and shrivel up and wither away and die and turn to

ash in his beautiful big arms and he'd remember me as the tiniest one to ever be worthy of him.

I love being 16 forever, calling gray hairs shiny  and turning everything pink. I'm 16 forever, and giggling like a kid over the brave things my friend says.

I still have a chance to know young love, something pure and exploring, because I'm 16 forever, eating junk food and writing poems about how I wish I was prettier, and maybe he loves me and maybe he doesn't.

Either way, I bleed for him and he can decide what to do with me while I'm 16 forever, and don't really care but also have the weight of feeling everything and being nothing  and standing on confidence but have no answers.

I guess there is no better place to question the existence of God than in a TJ Maxx cashier line with apple flavored chapstick that'll roll under my bed

and catch some hair and dust and stay stuck against the rug until it's 16 forever with worn out color and dull flavor looking for a reason to still be here.

august slipped away like a bottle of wine... amongst three friends who can't stop laughing but on the way home, there is a silence that overtakes them, reminds them, buzzes through them as they sobered up. some kind of anger that says, if i can't have my hearts desire, what is there to live for? may i, at least, laugh every day, in the way that hurts. may i never feel 14 again, i mean, the weight of the presence of a group of teenagers that could make a grown man close in on themselves. we can't all be lucky. high school wasn't a dream for us all. it's kind of scary, isn't it? we could just go our whole lives saying that? the yearning never stops for the burning ones. life isn't a dream for us all. on our death bed, with our last breath, we can't all be lucky.

somewhere along the way, a quiet phase turned into healed, turned into so many steps, and i can't find who i was before. and in poetically cruel fashion, this is something to mourn, i want more than anything to be dumb and 23, i thought i was hiding for a second chance. but this ticking clock is my losing game, a weight i hold every day. i told someone recently that i hate my story, this isn't the role i thought i'd be playing when i was 15 and full of prayer. they gave me the catharsis of silence, they didn't know what to say, maybe they too are a puppet to fate, a laughing stock of glory. only a fellow piece of the puzzle understands this wasted time, the helpless attempts for the upper hand.

march 27, 2023

your presence is everything.

I've called on it for ages.

you can pride yourself on this

healing you cause me to need.

selah. a break for the grief 

you force on me.

for the worship at your feet.

is it love if it boils down to anger? 

my rage, your wrath, 

welcoming companions.

maybe that's what you mean

when you say you know me.

and when you proclaim to know everything,

it feels like laughter pointed at me.

the prayer comes back to this:

remember when my devotion was soft?

when the strife wasn't so sharp,

taking up this space, deafening?

A stranger tells me I look like an angel             at a gas station.            Men with a death wish smoke cigarettes there.             I don't know what to say. I guess the angel is mute.                                                I told you I wasn't good enough.            I wish I was a smoker to give myself something to do.          She looks at me like she sees heaven                  and I am wearing                 the dress I begged to die in. I slept in and had nothing better                     to throw on.      I gave up a long time ago.               Even with the sermons and the strangers at the gas stations            and the glimpses of God in our humanity.                 She's looking at me, and my mother leaves the car.        The stranger announces the light in me.    Mom agrees.     She is basking in the promise.

March 19, 2023

I don't give in when the door shuts.

I sit with it at my chest, the pressure 

fills my lungs and to my stomach,

goes down my limbs, I feel it

from my bones and out of my skin,

until I give in all at once, the amateur 

surrenders to the broken root.

It affirms my shame, to lick the knife clean.

To keep the wound how you left it

and wash away proof of the damage.

There is no time for grief. But the things

I lose due to this body and how it

doesn't see the light. The way the ache

never really goes away, even when I yield to it.

Battlefield On The Meadow - Christina Hopp

If you were to try, right now, there would be

a forest waiting for you. A mess of causes

and reasons, an unholy grief to break through.

But I could never mistake that air, the heavy

sense of purpose that wafts through the walls

and aligns to our star-crossed bones.

I know I would soften at a moments notice,

and you would open me up to spit me out,

leave me stagnant, shaken, and you would

be there with me. This worship sounds different,

do you hear it? When the psalmist speaks,

does she fulfill you? Infinity is so far away,

a longing and the last thing I want. 

This anger is on the tip of my tongue in a

split second, I still don’t know what you think

of me, and I worship your altar. I’m terrified

of you, I’m enraged with you, and I somehow

adore you. At least once a day, I am 15 again,

weak in the knees at your blessed, living word

and when she comes around, she is so confused

at the duality, at this wretched body, at what

could have possibly happened to her intimate land.

this is not forever 

but my personal infinite.

the closest i've gotten.

if i turn to the sky

of all my chances,

it is you wrapped around

the end of my lasso.

i would pull, bring you near,

but i am desperate to know

how far the miracle goes.

can you see anything?

i am leaning in.

are you still there? 

aren't you just as curious? 

Feb 9, 2023

Life is good. Or, I mean, life is a good thing. Or maybe there is good somewhere if we are looking. There is possibly a purpose to the madness, and maybe it's in the gold that sparkles my sister's eyes or a good book that keeps me up all night. Or praying with my heart a little too wide, dreaming again - I forgot I was done with that for a second. There is an instinct here, to survive? No, to live, to live good, to romance the day with both feet planted, refusing to leave. And for something that has never been my reality, it is difficult to define.

Stolen Glances - Christina Hopp

The fat girl in the pretty dress

is a fat girl. The man who calls

is still a man. Now is not the time

for taken chances. 

The girl in the dress is just a soft girl. 

And it's so easy to dream, 

always at the ready, tip of her tongue. 

Honey is her romance, safe are the words 

beneath her wings. 

But the man across the room 

is still a man, and isn't that enough?

The fat girl in the pretty dress and

all the accessories she couldn't wait to wear. 

The fat girl and those eyes,

imagining what she doesn't know of.

The fat girl and this big swallowing room 

that strips her of all defense.

But her laugh lightens all the pressure, 

she doesn't care if he hears.

There is no more room in her for taken chances

a crack in the universe - christina hopp

I knew this love was unbalanced,

all my offering, all your silence. but

something in me cracked, or softened.

now I kneel before the war and I don't curse it.

I don't shake my fist at the clouds.

I somehow feel you, in my words, 

in my breath, king and spirit and power. 

one wall falls and you mold my instincts,

and that's all the language I must listen with.

but the not knowing, the quiet deepness,

that's what caused the pain in the first place.

why do you hide? even now, 

after everything? just your doting, smitten 

heart pleading for the whisper, willing to give up

anything to hear you, worth nothing more 

than the worship. sometimes I forget why I got angry. 

but I do remember. even as I feel you 

a little more now, like a fog on the eyes, 

morning mist. laughably, it is meant to calm me.