Mammoths
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.
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