about the work: i’ve played around with expanding this into a short story of some sort but never quite got around to it. it works with tropes of non-human things wearing human faces, grief, and creatures that are both omnipotent and yet found lacking in the face of simply being human.
1.
there is a god, and he has your lover’s face.
strong start, right? something about the nature of the universe. something about the way you miss the man that used to be your best friend. something about the way that you can’t stop falling asleep at night and dreaming of places that don’t exist and people that do. something about the way you keep waking up covered in blood.
2.
there is a god, or something. he’s definitely more than whatever you are. he reaches into the code of the universe and he pulls and from it he brings a bouquet. the flowers are for you.
3.
so, right. yes. as you were. there is a god and you know his name and you’re not really sure if you’re making it all up or not. your lover is in prison, a criminal with rotting hands. you hear a lot of different words about what’s happening to him, and you can’t tell if they disturb you or not.
sure. he’s strong and self-assured, and maybe he’s just showing you what you want to see. (and what does that say about you? if you look at god and see a dead man? is it your guilt? is it your love? is it something else entirely?)
4.
are you awake? it’s not like it matters. you’re sleeping and you’re standing and you’re on your knees— make whatever jokes you will about all of it. there are lots of things you want to say. what is it like? where are you from? why have you come?
you meet his mother, once. you’re not really sure if it’s his mother or your lover’s mother or somehow both at once, but she has a kind smile. she asks you to play go fish with her. you lose, but you don’t get the feeling she cheated. you get the feeling she’s been here for a long, long time, and she’s spent those years with a deck of cards in her hands and a smile on her face.
4.
so. there is a god with green eyes that you could map out with your own closed, and there is his mother who drops off bread on your front doorstep every saturday, and there is a man somewhere who you haven’t seen in years and he is still in love with you. you don’t know what to do with any of it. you don’t know where to put your hands. you don’t know who you trust to hold your heart.
4.
the first time you show god a pepper grinder, he spends the next twenty-four consecutive hours looking at it. peering through the glass, uncapping and recapping the lid, shaking its contents up and down. is holy a place without pepper grinders? is divinity just the childlike wonder of the unknown? yes and no, probably. both at once and also neither.
you never kiss. you never have sex. you don’t really think you’re in love with the thing wearing your lover’s face, because you call him your lover to try and stymie the way it hurts. to make it seem like his relation to you is something rational. because if you express all of it, the massive burdened whole of it, you don’t think you’re ever going to wake up again.
5.
you wake up.
you talk to someone with your lover’s face, your lover’s smile, your lover’s voice. it’s something, right? well, is it?
you go to sleep.