Prayer

I still remember The Lord's Prayer, but I don't believe in God. 

The words are imprinted into some strange, sunken shrine within my skull. 
Forged into bone at age nine by naivety, parental notions, and nightly repetitions. 
Each line in the dutiful prayer as meaningless as the instructions for a machine that never worked. 

Yet they still rise up from the recesses of my mind like a reflex. Like a cough or a sneeze from a body that once bowed without questioning why.  

Maybe it's because the cadence of it still surprisingly soothes, even though its content no longer convinces.