God ripped the deer asunder.
the crackling of the ribs sung aloud,
pleading, calling out to him:
a solemn prayer.

he knelt in the blood,
his hands stained in marrow,
and a smell of something much older than both.
the act enshrined in a bed of daises,
blanketing the rotting flesh.
and then God kissed it.

i saw him bring the carcass close,
seeming to dance with it in the moonlight—
a waltz to make a grandmother proud.
he whispered something unimaginable,
and then, he pulled away,
with nothing left but ruin.

then, a glance to me,
freezing me in his sorrowful eyes.
captured in that moment,
a thousand different lifetimes,
each more bitter than the last.

God wept—
a horrid scream a person should never hear.
eons of misery all at once,
ghosts scurrying across skin.

the caterwaul rendered me inert,
a shriek with such ancient, primal agony,
that it seemed to carve time into my flesh.

each tear down his face
a thousand daggers to the heart.

and then there was nothing.
silence as thick as stone.
even the heavens held their breath.

God fell to his knees,
the whole of the earth falling with his weight.

the earth trembled beneath such sorrow.
the mother cradlibg her dead baby,
echoes of forever-gone laugher,
music hanging from a cross.
the ancient, to bury the youth.

how does one comfort a grieving mother?
how does one console the maker of grief itself?

i bore witness to his undoing,
watched eternity crack and crumble.
like autumn leaves beneath winter’s frost.

in that look,
he offered me the weight of time,
and in that moment:
i saw myself look back at me,
those passing people down the street,
all at once—
God’s eyes in mine,
and all the lives borne.
—v, s.