crooked as corkscrews

There’s an idea in many space stories, that the cosmos is a place of transformation, a crucible in which things burn, and if humans venture out deep enough they also burn, and become more fully who they are—that even in the wildest reaches of space, there we are, most pure and dark and bright and realised, somehow coming home. Our bodies come from stars and we find in space all that we are—terror, strangeness, beauty, hope.

the divine is full of monsters;

incandescent giants who lick their gold teeth,
whose mouths are full of crumbling cities, who breathe
death and fire and revelation and madness while
diamonds crack like splinters of bone between their gums

their whims are carved in stone, sand, pillars of salt
their feathers sticky with luminescent blood, their fingers
thunderous with creation, lightning in their eyes
that crackles and hisses from every direction of the sky

the divine is not static and humane; the divine does not play nice.

they will eat everything you are.

they will leave you reformed in a roar of light, peel away layers of you like birth
and with a saint’s conviction you will know that nothing feels more like luxury,
better to be blinded by brilliance than close your eyes to awe-

for your lips are always being kissed.

your mouth is champagne roses. you will eat lotuses. your lungs are perfumed and
your bones will blossom into stars. your blood is wine and you are clothed in light;

your skin threshed wheatlike until the gold of you shines.

Cities force us to interact with strangers and with the strange. They pry the mind open. And that is why they are the idea that has unleashed so many of our new ideas.

I bet if we dusted her heart for fingerprints, we’d only find yours.

May you find love. May you find it wherever it’s been hidden. May you find who’s been hiding it and exact revenge upon them. As the old song goes, love is all you need... to destroy your enemies.