Find the illustrated version here.
Inertness
I have always felt there was something wrong with my
inertness. My inability to be transfigured, with the other youths, by cascading hymns
into ecstasy of communion. The Spirit neither drew tongues
nor threw me writhing to the floor.
These pills do not vanish my migraines, my tempers,
the midnight sawing between my ribs. I wait
for fat to melt from my bones. Transformation
does not arrive for those who lack belief.
I remain—soft, brown, stagnant
to the core. Does god craft some from air
and others from mud? They imbibe faith, it ignites their souls.
I stamp sparks underfoot.
But, from time to time, the patchwork stretches, frays,
to open seams, silent and unmoving—
sunlight, dripping down a verdant slope; a twist
of music; the frictionless weight of Saturn’s moons—
My body trembles with the travelling
of a lovely ghost, evaporating the stitches
between my cells, brightening synapses—glorious whorls—
slow motion I fragment
in tenderness,
in wonder.
