That night I held the moon’s yellowed skin
between my teeth, night’s breath on my palms,
dove into lakewater. Surfaced for
air only to find riverbed. Punctuated my strokes
with panic, minnows
opened my scars, daytime came pouring out.
God called me, then, through an expanse of vapor,
said Let there be light. He
showed me His rivers, His aphelion moons—
fractalling, dark, their heavy-lidded
holes mottled
and inky. Before He touched me, He let
fat spoons of evening ribbon across Jupiter,
their wingless bodies wrinkled
and fetal. I can’t remember exactly,
but when He reached into the water
to save me my soul was rendered hyaloid,
each hanging gibbous a sunspot in my vision, a
penumbra undone. He promised me I’d burn now,
for only a little while.
Said He’d been listening, zenithlike. How physicists
are always breaking His universe
into palm-sized pieces, the kind
our kind can bear to hold. And
when I open my mouth to speak
my body becomes ecliptic, solar,
coats my voice in a red haze.
I try to ask and find
I cannot look directly at Him. You, He says, and
in His mouth my name sounds like
water evaporating,
a remembered promise,
a breath cleaving this night into birds.
And now, as I write, dawn is breaking like His fist
holding together galaxies; there
is a humming sound within an oscillating entropy;
an abyss; a swathed lagoon, a place
where I can give more than a prayer.
Rue is a writer from Pennsylvania. When she’s not writing introspective journal entries or poetry on bus rides, you can find her consuming her bodyweight in blueberries or running with her track team. Her Instagram is @rue.huang.
