“…I will live sparingly” ~ D. Bonta
There was a leather-bound bible embossed
with mother’s name; a ribbon marker, angels
with flaming swords on a gold-edged
prayer card tucked between pages
thinner than leaves. She let me read
from it, nights before I fell asleep.
And I’d fast-forward, skipping
from the Gospels to Revelations,
its visions of horned beasts rising from
the depths: crowned with bloody diadems,
ringed with teeth and claws, chimerical
phantoms bellowing the fire and smoke
of Armageddon. More suspenseful
than a thriller— but how much
of what I read was truth, how much
was mystery? My hands grew clammy
from reading of calamity: how stars
extinguished themselves and the dead
swam in lakes of fire; how ships
and their precious cargo sank
into oceans of bewilderment. How I
was smaller than a speck in the vastness
of this universe hurtling steadily
toward the certainty of the end of days.
In response to Via Negativa: Citizen.