Grace Yang (17)
I sacrificed everyone I loved to God and then I killed him too
I sacrificed everyone I loved to God and then I killed him too
| I sacrificed everyone I loved to God and then I killed him too |
my soul an offering
cathedral aflame
an empty performance
numb honor is smoke
dying in the sky
an alchemist, or perhaps God
alive in ashes
heart falling open
like a clock
time is an offering to the horizon
I run to
yearning
hollow
the bodies gone the holes dug
broken feet hit the ground to nowhere everywhere unattainable holy
when I burned the church I burned myself too
slip of charred moon a cry of forget
body that taught me to kill put a knife in my hands
(screamed as she bled)
when I was a child she made me an offering
to holy the church I
pledge allegiance I pledge my eyes my chest my blood tick ticking
she raised me I loved her I loved them all
in this story Abraham kills
his son and his wife
and his mother
he did what he was told
I did it for honor I burned it
in the sky my hands
are ashes of prayers or dead stars
did I offer my soul (or simply a cold knife inherited)?
my mother was warm and sticky dripping off my blade
God deserved a torch
his ashes on the wind
melt me into grief unholy
I am a ghost pledged to dissipating smoke if I killed them for honor
I killed honor too votive ephemeral
I say I won’t forget but I
tangled moondrunk July in my rain nothing
is an omen, not the crescent of the sun behold
the moon
behold time
behold absence
behold what’s left of God or perhaps
an alchemist, alive in ashes
or perhaps death
spilling
from clocks that ring like church bells
Grace Yang (she/her) is a queer, disabled, Asian American writer. She lives and writes in Lexington, Massachusetts.
