Petra White

So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded. — Ezekiel 24:18 She is approaching him, God, he sees her in his eye-edge, a tiny gold speck getting bigger, scintillating. Her beauty lashes him with its sword — but she has heard all this before. She approaches him, the one who killed her, and she reeks of life. He waits for her to dissolve in him, but her grit encircles his teeth. He waits for her to become what he has made her, an angel, passionate and cold as the dawn, quietly encased in power, churning out neutral love and fastened to eternity, backwards and forwards all the days. But the world is tangled in her hair. She is getting closer and her gold beauty is greening, her face is turning furious, fury-like, her death opens around him and he feels a human fear. He cannot match her, she has the reins of creation in her slim white paws, he feels the world creeping away from him. He makes to shove her from heaven, let her slip and slumber through the world. But he cannot grip her. She gleams through him like heaven through a needle. the stroll God takes Ezekiel for many walks. He talks about all the things he will do to the people, this and this and this, and then they will know who I am. One day they chance upon a valley of bones splintering and whitening in the sun. Shall these bones live? These bones? Oh Lord. God flings sinew on the bones, liver, spleen, gristle. The bodies rise. Rise without breath, wet clay glistens in the sun. He gives breath, as if an afterthought. Ezekiel tries to see in their eyes, one at a time. The men not moving but lunging forward like warriors, eyes ice cold mud seen through mist, waiting for their souls to snap back in. They are bruised with an ache made not by the world. Their forgotten stories rift their faces, their deaths now a hole they can walk through. Home a space that closed after them, rinsed of the mourning that ran its course. They glimmer in new reality, still speechless, as if they were really the miracle ... But already God has taken Ezekiel by the elbow.