god
the kindly butcher
and you, lying
obediently on the table,
cleaved neatly in half,
your sinew and flesh cut by
the same hands that molded you from the river bank,
who cradled you in the arm of a spiral galaxy
just shy of a light gentle enough to reveal the
cave around you; now, there is only
an unfurling map to the
star-speckled wings of space
that roost in every dying
cell of you.

time passes until the
begetting,
the ending,
the abandoning,
your body now bearing the marks of
a believer swallowed by tragedy:
a noah who drowns in the tempest
a jonah eaten by a great fish
a job who dies in pain and poverty--
and you
a death in slow motion.