The atheist awoke clutching a nightmare of a new Messiah. This one would invoke terror and burning with such a simple message. Turning water into blood -- all the better to keep them sober -- so that the thickness would bond all men as brothers and all women as equals. And the Old Order would build crucifixes skyscraper tall, collecting clouds at the apex, because centuries of money begets power and power begets self-interest and self-interest begets a ruthless rage.

First find her ripely inconsolable. She must be beautiful (squeeze the round end -- does it yield perceptibly without deformation?), yet she must think herself ******. The following factors produce this effect: a society which denigrates her, a family which ignores her, fairy-tales which tell her she fulfils herself upon belonging to a man. Once you have selected her, you must purchase. Pay with attention, time, care and compliments. Do not spend too much -- you might suffer buyer's remorse later. Then, before she is sure of herself, make demands. Tell her that her utility is based on your own convenience, and slowly browbeat until soft and creamy.

I refuse to drown in you, he thinks as he looks once more in her tidal eyes. I refuse to drown in you again. Yet she is already unleashing her waves upon his shores. They lap at him with all the conniving eagerness of a dog's aimless devotion. He takes his last breath. His whole being yearns to lose itself in her hint of cleavage -- no, not the whole being, just the part that pulls strongest when the moon is out and the wolves howl -- and he spins under the assault of her simple availability. He is pulled under. I refuse he cries weakly, mouth emptying into the empty night, lungs bubbling vainly and knowing that as he raves he will break his vows again and blame the harlot, the *****, the temptress who mothered his manhood to tumescence; so that she could for a moment own his essence. And as he plans ahead to decry and deny the shame that this will bring he feels for the ring in his pocket, safe for when the act will be over.

When times were better -- before you met her and decided that love's string was only so long and not longer -- our arms were stronger so we held each other more tightly, cat's cradles weaved around us. It was then that you thought of me and said I will build you a memory palace and into it you packed the smiles you filled like balloons on the hard days, compliments arranged as tessellated tiles, the promises you gave to build better tomorrows. I walk through it now, past windows that let in the light of crashed moons. I walk through it now, through doorways that guard empty rooms.  I walk through it now, waiting for the stones to fall and bury me.

I shall love you in all the small moments; I shall live in those scant seconds when you forget. I will be the bursting seam of a lie in your mouth; I will nestle amongst the many frayed edges of your hungry anemone heart. Feed on our memories and sense the truth that true love stains you, through and through you are deep and black with this iodine. It soaks in and reveals the fractures, it lies behinds the smiles you manufacture. So now we cup our empty hands and wait for nothing. And it is in the small moments that this phantom's hands will touch yours, and your cup will fill to spilling with half-dreamed maybes.

Young, yes, but even so the boy spun circles ‘round the sallow priest.
This older man was young, too -- almost too young to shoulder his responsibilities. Undisturbed by time, unbowed by gravity, he was the still spoke in this wheel, remaining tall, straight, like a candle: smelling of tallow, waxy and sinuous. He burned dimly with certainty, the simple certainty of the taught. This was the priest, but also burning was the spinner for he span circles unbroken, in simplicity complete.
"So, God knows what we will do tomorrow?”
"Yes, yes," answered the priest, annoyed already. Always annoyed at the impositions of children, who call and caterwaul when they have not learned respect, who do not learn respect in an age of information, who do not shut their eyes against the dark awe of the ineffable.
Still spinning, light glinting from him, the boy was marvellous and profound without even trying. "But we do what we want?" His head flamed too, not the guttering candle flame but instead the true brightness of a star.
"Yes, yes," answered the priest, "we have free will."
"But God wants what is best?" The boy span, the circle tightened.
"Yes, yes," answered the priest. "God always wants the best.  Everything is for the best, for God has willed it."
"So what I do tomorrow God already sees. What God wants is the best. If what he saw was not best, he would change it." The boy was concluding that everything was for the best, all he did was for the best, for this was always the best of all possible worlds. And his head rang with the circuit of the circle, for it came back around and completed itself.

The priest pinched fingers at his nose.  "You do not understand."

Please know that I am proud to suffer with you, to sup of this with you: all of the parasites and pestilence that time perpetrates. I share the surprise that simmers in your widening sunshine eyes, which right now brim with tears at the dawn of life. You aren't ready to know this yet, as I hold your hand, but you have many moments ahead of you where this sympathy is all you will have.

Others chatter at the edges of our vision and ask whether you could ever understand. Yet your first response is to ask if she is gone forever, and there is no better definition of what has happened. You understand everything. It is just that, where we talk of the evils done by people, you have monsters that prey on the innocent for no reason. Where we have injustice, you have bullies. And if they are not the same, then you do not understand; and if you do not understand, then it is because you do not suffer. Yet I am here with you now, and I know you do, and I know you will. You will hold its bright little ball tight in your hands and halt it as long as you can, until you burst.