Have Faith My Colorless

These are death masks.

While in wait, the children soil, and breed. The mothers have lists, items: we count. The only sit is the sit to watch and worm: these tell the tide to tell. It is not the moon that moods the shore to run—worms.

There are ghosts.

The inns become hospice and procreate—among the white. We are colorless, fathomless, and embraced. We are embarrassed and helpful, agonized and clear: we see, we see.

“It is not we!”

We are cut, diagrammed and diseased. My infant son points at a star and begins to speak and we are cautioned, once, to listen: this is god. He is small and looks like a child. He is small. He is a child. The social members do not believe that ghosts are real.

We are told to learn the good.

I tell them to hide. We begin again, at the start, where the line is clear on the pavement. The line is solid, unbroken and clear. We count until the start: it starts. It comes: come in, come out, come in. We are ghosts in here and do not hold our hands when the sun is out. We are ghosts in here and do not listen to the boom—boom—boom.

“It is not we!”

We will believe. It is only the heart of the man that has been bred by the un-man, the under-man, the unbroken man that is no-man. It is only the heart. The boom, the silence that waits after the un-silence is only the un-man. He has wrestled from sleep, caved in the solitude of non-listeners and woken to the worm walk of the makers of masks. The boom is not we.

She cuts and bleeds and dies and lies in her bed and bleeds and dies. And it stops. It ends. It is not life. It is her life. The church, on this side, close to the all-night shops that sell, has bells. The bells ring and people dressed in dark begin to walk the paved paths.

“It is not we!”

It is time to rejoice. This redemption, our blood, has become the kingdom and we are no longer the sin. We are ghosts. This is not my home. I will chant and rise and chant and sleep. And I will not die.

Alas, we do not wear the death masks. We run to the basement, hidden below the church, and pray that she is not us—that we are not diseased: that this life is not ours.


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