Here, Angel

Marisa Oishi

you scream at god in a language foreign to yourself

the night your father falls from the sky. the choir

continues. you almost fall to your knees but you do not.

in another life you stained glass. in another life you stood

outside the church long as that dying pine but on the third

night of august the rest melts away. you are left with the truth

in an empty cathedral and you feel the endless requiem begin

in your skull. you don’t know if you screamed because there is

no god or if the worse truth would be that there is. the truth is

you are not god. god does not crash cars. you do not get to save people. you are a child. god is not a child. you are not god. children do not choose to fall. god does not crash cars. you did not choose to fall. you are not god. you do not get to save people. god does not crash cars. you did not choose to crash. you are not god. you did not fall. you did not crash. you are not god. you do not get to save people. you are not god. you do not get to crash. you are not god

and you will always be a child. everything breathes so everything leaves

so everything grieves. for one blinding second you saw it all: through a gap

in the clouds a shaft of light. then crushing nightfall for three hundred years.

slowly the sun rises in the east now. it glows incandescent glorious

all around you. the truth is you never will understand. you almost fall

to your knees but you do not. you stand there as you always have

and always will. you did not fall, dear.

there is always room for you here, angel.