Young Writers Society

fellowship.

i. beatitudes
ii. orthodox
iii. contrition
iv.
v.

i. beatitudes

Twelve of the world's most ordinary men saw
the world end and never recovered. They saw a man die,
and live, and leave. The order was all wrong but they righted
what they could, mourned anyway. With time, their grief gentled
to faith; of it, they built religion. But the stained glass and
the wine could never match the first time: at sea, with the fish.
The water puddled at his feet; his hands with bread.

ii. orthodox

In lieu of church-going,
I find myself watering the plant.
For seven minutes, the plant enters
a state of vidi aquam, and drinks from
my right hand; a particularly meditative
Sunday may see the service stretch to eight.
So I am reaching then, all the way back,
past Sundays known and unknown,
past the angel and his awakening and his sword,
to the first garden. To Eden, because isn't that thought
so inexplicably sudden: somewhere we were loved.

iii. contrition

This confession rings in the confessional
of a splintered chamber, so let it chime. and so
I've said it, bruised this fist, nailed my guilt on the door;
so you'll have to see this now. This is a grand
declaration for a body so fallible, so quick to fall,
but this center will not hold. I pray with my
eyes to the whale-ribs in the ceiling;

Leviathan had a mother too, you know.
He wasn't born to swallow a man whole, to show
him the sins of the world. Someday, it might
convert a man to know of familiarity.