/'god / es/
noun
1. you know what it is to be holy. deep veins filled with ichor ache for wounds the earth feels, lightning storms and hurricane pain walking hand in hand across a ground you helped design. the thousand voices that scream your name in both battle chant and song. their lives are not a game but you play anyway.
2. you are sharp edged steel. a lone fragment of a shattered mirror, the broken bone reflection of a cruel smile. all that you are is ripped edges and cracked glass but your heart still throbs with lioness blood.
3. ichor drips from your fingertips, gold glistens on your lips. you took to power like Icarus took to the sky and you know your fall will be just as sweet.


ache
/a k/
noun
1. heavy wind, cold rain, & yes the stars, & yes these hands of mine. a dream in my chest is melting. my dream sheds its muddy, thunder-stained skin & asks for a heart of peony fields this time.
2. & the nights get heavy like they always do. i am older which means when i think of forests i get stuck not on the robin eggs but on the fox teeth. in my head I am hunting for myself, but I come up empty again. the night grows so wide it could be a cavern & i am somewhere underneath it, inside it, lost. but travellers always leave lanterns behind & as i feel for the candle there arrives a memory of bronze-coloured light.
3. so i dream, i dream, i keep dreaming. one word in my mouth crystallizes like sugar: hope.