In the summer at day's end

In the summer
at day's end
we notice our salted skin
(how it clings and crusts as silt deposits)
touch lightly the tomato-red sheen in that space just below the eyes.

Wearied bodies. Sticking flesh. Warmed and weighted eyes. The smell of ourselves.
We are caked with the soil that draws up seeds to plants
and the dampnesses that quench them.
The water runs off us, coffee rich against the porcelain sink.

Who was it that likened sin to dirt? Who declared purity a vast white void?
Who never noticed the gospel of a body

The world existed

The world existed.

Before anything else, it was all fire: Golden, molten, radiating, relentlessly bright flame.

Nothing was hidden. But nothing could be seen either, because it would melt the eyes. Even God was nervous to approach the world.

God longed for the dark things. Ash meant everything had burned, but it also meant substance had cooled. God could gaze upon charcoal and see all the folds and tunnels that ran through it, marking a flame's path. God could hold it in the hand, stick it in the pocket, carry it elsewhere.

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