Mother always said her Bible was a cage she kept closed so God couldn’t get out.
When she died I opened it
and the living room metamorphosed: gaudy wallpaper clouds blossomed outwards and floated away, the bells of apocalyptic trumpets sprouted from floorboards like brass mushrooms, paperbacks became scrolls scabbed over with seals.
Come and see prophecies revealed as promises.
Come and see the foundations laid for the New Kingdom.
Come and see…
-“Cassandra, if there’s something you want to share with the whole class please raise your hand.”
-“I’m sorry, Mrs. Baumgartner. But the angels emerging in our woodshed all have scythe blades for wings. When they sing, their hymns are the secrets the moon whispers back to the wolves. I haven’t been able to sleep. Can you come over? Can you see?”
-“Cassandra, if I need to contact your father…”
…who is genuflecting before the flaming gate that was once a TV? He won’t answer. But what does he glimpse within? It’s too bright for me to look. Will we have to walk into that silver-gold fire hand in hand one day? Will Father comfort me or will I comfort him? What can any of us know of each other before the burning is born? And borne?
Mother, the house is rotting into Heaven.
Mother, you still aren’t here.
Mother, if anything truly dwelt in your Good Book it was just a virus wearing a King James mask, and I can close that heavy leather cover but I can never scrape the holy infection from the red coral of my mind so instead I must imagine a divinity worthy of your love and then place you in its eternal arms instead,
meaning somewhere above the cosmos you embrace yourself.
Aaron Knuckey lives and writes in the never-ending cornfields of Central Illinois. He has never seen a ghost but one starry night in junior high, he mistook a meteor’s blue trail for a UFO, and ever since he has striven to mistake the mundane for the magical (when possible).
