Mammoths

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In the beginning, God created the apocalypse.

The smoke clouds shrank until nothing was dark

anymore. They fell out of the sky, and when they

hit the ground, they were tiny dead blackbirds, still

waiting to be fed. They had been waiting for eight

thousand years. The ground roared into God’s

earhole, furious, animalistic. Nothing was animal

again. The earth shook like a glass ball trembling

in a jagged metal container. Tiny bits splintered off,

flew into people’s eyes, into God’s. It’s never too late

for apology, but sometimes, there are too many glass

bits in your throat and it won’t come out properly.

God, with these glass bits in his eyes, was seeing

mammoths. Wooly mammoths he created long

ago, their coats thick and skin-close like memory.

His life flashed before his eyes, which is to say, he

was seeing the end of the universe. A girl was

weeping in the corner of that universe. She was

weeping because nothing would be the same again.

I was weeping because everything would be the same.

So it goes. In the end, God created you. Your breath

smelled like rosewater, your head was wreathed with

silk. You looked like a memory. I wanted so badly to

call out, but I knew you wouldn’t turn because you were

all that was left in the world, meaning I was no longer

in it. Meaning God was no longer in it, or that in this

world, you were God. I knelt at the altar and prayed.