Hallelujah

A haze covers the form
of a line in the distance,
but I can still hear it,
Marching, pounding.
A rabbit’s heart.

I can taste the words
of an old battle hymn
ready to spring off my tongue.

“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword”

The words play relentlessly in my head,
over and over.
but my mouth stays closed.
The silence of an insect.
The song dies on my parched lips.

The sky is yellow.
I have never seen the sun.
But I am so hot,
I imagine it’s creeping closer to the ground every day.
Sinking. Burning.
Coming closer, like the line in the distance.

Marching, Pounding.
I hear the rabbit’s heart in my ears again,
beating in time to the hymn,
the flutter of each chamber
in an effort to keep up the twitches.
Flickers.

The line solidifies into a mass of bodies.
They stumble onward,
cavalry without horses,
marines without an ocean.

“I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel”

Their crooked hands and pockmarked faces.
bleeding dry blood.

The sky is red and orange.
Life is an oven.
There is no more water left to sweat.
There is no more water left to cry.
There is no more water left.
Dry, Cracking.

The sky is disintegrating.
Rocks pierce the clouds:
an upside-down mountain.
falling, falling.

“So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave”

The rabbit dies of asphyxiation.

Falling, Crashing, Burning.
The sky is on fire.
The world is on fire.
The clouds are chemicals.
The world grinds to a halt.

Chemical reaction.

Explosive reactants + heat energy =

…

. . .

. . . .

Dust, Dust.

Glory, Glory.

Stardust.

Into the darkness
of a void.

Hallelujah.