When I whisper, the little dots shiver,
point at their statues and say
"Look. They are crying, like us."
Better to be a cloud than to hurt so much,
to cry into my face pleading mercy.
They shall have their mercy
when the oceans turn to dust.
These little dots shake when I cleave
the sky in two with my jagged jawline.
Its flash illuminating the hairs-breadth
chasm between worship and terror:
my voice too loud to speak over.
Some still love beneath,
their drenched faces implicating me
in the tongue tangled history of kissing.
But I also invented the rust on the nail.
My proudest attribute:
that I will wear everything away,
even those testaments to forever
the little dots wrap around each other's fingers.
Silver, gold, titanium, diamond,
it does not matter.
I know something of this forever
the little dots do not.
How much of their ash I have washed from hillsides,
sending myself down in great billowing wallows
to lift the grey dust of grief that sifts
between their fingers, carrying it downstream
where it may finally rest.
I know it is best they cannot hold on
to what has passed, though they disagree
pointing up at the red streaks I paint
beneath the eyelids of their finally honest
hollow artworks. Their saints, their Marys,
their lady of liberty, as they say
"Please, promise me we do not cry like that."
Better to dissipate at the slightest touch
of heat than wear such unrelenting weather.
I mimic flames in the river's pale lisp,
screaming "stay back" as the saddest little dots
hurl themselves into my white,
clamoring teeth pleading mercy.
If only their corrosion were as simple as rust,
iron baking in the rain: changing,
if not for better, at least by law.
At times I condense between
these little dots and their bathroom mirrors,
suggesting they treat themselves with mercy.
After all, I am also in them,
coming out of their breath in those bedrooms
where they spend the heaven of their flesh.
I weigh the space between those walls
heavy as the sky with my million little eyes,
preparing, as always, to fall.
Chilled in the morning's exhale
I settle on the skin of a nail she used
to carve their initials a tree's browning bark,
framing their future in a heart
or an arrow pointing down.
There on the nail, too small to be seen,
I grow an orchard of crimson and orange:
the blossoming for which steel secretly yearns.
Always too quiet or loud to be heard
I scream, and I scream, and I scream.
I will cleanse this world of everything.
