Vow

<p><em>Vow </em>is a story about how 20 years of the internet including morally dubious relationships to older men as a young girl age-inappropriate exposure to pornography and online-only erotic trysts with men in adulthood obscured my yearning for God. </p><p> </p><p>The chapbook opens with a vignette of a typical night at 12-years-old: online past my bedtime waiting for a response from the man 10 years my senior who I fell into unrequited infatuation with which lasted for almost two years. This relationship was one of if not <em>the</em> most foundational of my adolescence and it was comprised of worship devotion and never-ending desire. I include writing on two recent online infatuation-ships that inexplicably captured my focus to my detriment and despair. These storylines collide at Catholic spiritual retreat in which a guided meditation leads to a painful epiphany about my childhood relationship to the internet sexuality childhood trauma and reaching for love and divinity. The book concludes with a pleading love letter to God. </p>