Salvation

I pray to God for a miracle. My birthday falls on the 28th of December. I always see the clock’s hands strike 13:13. Feeble black cats and crows scour around my every step searching for something within me, they think I am one of them. My skin is translucent with icy veins peaking through, and my hair and my heart are dense, heavy. The priest in the confessional booth speaks to me as if there is a steaming, dark aura emitting from my very soul. So I sit and pray countless rosaries. The bone white beads are pale, cold and forgiving against my frail fingers.

One day trudges by. Then countless days slug on by like thick molasses dripping down an empty glass jar. The children still point and frown when I pass by. But soon enough I find a man waiting outside my porch, even when the lanterns are put out and not a creak slips out of the door. Outside my dead, empty home.

He’s seen me loitering around the church, and says that he has found a strange, unwavering fascination with my beautiful skin and bright eyes. I know he’s lying because my eyes are shadowed and hooded, yet my ears remain open and I listen. There is no one else to listen to. He tells me about his journeys, adventures, lovers, friends, and everything that I don’t have. A part of me believes that God did bestow a fortune upon me on this very day. “Rejoice!”, sing the angels in heaven and the demons in hell. He has sent me a miracle! One that loves me, like how a man would treat his wife. He knows that I am more than a witch shrouded in black. 

Thirteen days pass. He says that he is leaving, leaving to seek salvation. And as any loyal sheep would do, I follow him. I pledge to follow him to the ends of Earth, to the ends of the universe and back. He takes me through winding roads and ruthless foliage to his herd of men. They claim that they saw God. Someone croaks about how Lucifer is coming to torch the Earth in his ever-burning flames. I need to sacrifice myself in order to repent for humanities sins, so I give up the little items I have. I slot my coins, precious pearls that my mother gifted to me for my First Communion, and bone white rosary into a sealed box and blindly follow my new savior’s lead.

Thirteen weeks pass. I travel to a run down, dying town on the side of some road. They tell me to pick the, weakest, most fragile person I can find, and to treat him like he is my lover. I wait outside a lone man’s porch, who’s lanterns have been put out. The room is dead empty and not even a creak slips out from the door. He tells me how his wife passed from an illness and I plant my lips onto his and whisper pointless affirmations into his open ears. After thirteen more days of playing marionette, I simply accept my fate and he accepts his.

Thirteen decades pass. I am seated in hell and forced to witness victims suffer my same fate.

Thirteen centuries pass and my punishment will commence soon. 

Thirteen millenia pass and I watch as Lucifer shrouds the world in black. A suffocating wave of guilt, remorse, regret, and everything in between washes over me and all I can do is drown — wallow in my pitiful sorrow. I fall to my knees and pray once more for a miracle to fall upon me.

Ecliptic Orbit

She is the Sun and I am the Moon. 

The universe has cast me into a cage, a prisoner of unbreakable law. Laws that bound me to her brilliance but never allow me to keep a piece for myself. And if I defy these unyielding rules, I risk becoming nothing—a small speck of dust lost in the vastness of space.

Her pale eyelashes flutter in the wind and her hair glows like millions of hydrogen atoms colliding and imploding. Smooth words flow out of her lips, like warm orange honey drizzling to the ears of the world. Her eyes are bright and her gaze extends to the ocean and back, luminous and alive.

I am freezing cold. Cold and stoic and horribly unappealing. Craters and shadows litter my face to no end. Thick, knitted wool always shrouds me, yet a chill always seeps through the stitches. A plastic tube with odd colored liquid and the letters IV inscribed on a floppy pouch chain me to the confines of this sterile white room. I start to think that the only purpose God has granted me is to mindlessly spin day by day.

Her embrace keeps me warm—more warmth than any quilt will ever provide to my frigid, thin body. She beams light onto my face, a soothing hum for my soul. I would be invisible without her because she breathes life into my mere existence.

I always find myself wishing upon a shooting star that I too could become like my fire, my hearth. But I can only pray. Pray millions of times over and over again, yet nothing will ever change. My heart longs to be something, anything, and everything.

But all I can do is dance and spin in staggered circles around her pious radiance. Then, cherish the light she sheds onto me and mourn the loss of her love when she’s gone.

Eat More, Talk Less

My food has gone cold. Rice, meat and soup gaze up at me, pleading for a bit of attention, but they remain untouched. Words spill out of my mouth, a never ending waterfall. Dad chastises me and tells me to eat more and talk less. I roll my eyes and ignore him.

My dreams that night are vivid and fun and full of long rainbows and sparkling unicorns. I am in the center of it all, a paintbrush in my hand and infinitely many canvases stacked behind each other like dominos. I know that if my arm twitches too much or my leg jerks up unexpectedly, everything will fall in an instant. But in this dream I swing and move colors and create life to a moderate tempo and smile, blissfully unaware. 

Utensils and food are splayed out on our old wooden table. I say I want to be an artist instead of a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer. Dad yells at me and calls me stupid and I scream back horrible offenses to his face. I raise my voice and hot tears stream down my face. I said that they don’t love me and don’t want to let me follow my dreams, or something stupid and childish like that.

The clock strikes 11 and I hear empty sobs from the room across mine. The ringing in my ears has simmered down but my eyes and temples still ache and linger. It crashes down on me, like dominos collapsing onto each other. I know that my mother is holding my father’s shoulders and telling him that it’ll all pass by soon. 

It feels gloomy, like the weather after a hurricane or rainstorm. My heart is pulled to the pit of my stomach in shame and I regret all of the stupid and childish things I proclaimed. I really do need to eat more. To digest these millions of words and letters that float around me all the time and stop retaliating. Dad was right—Eat more, talk less.