Hermeneutics

All winter she’s been growing more powerful. Radiant, says the man at the bar. Voluptuous, says the docent. Nervy, says God. All winter her soul has been juddering. It feels like drinking gold flakes! The word sleeps inside the stone. The wind tongues the underside of the lake. Inside the rifle scope of time, God teaches her Grounding Techniques through his emissary, a Certified Therapist. Beetles bore their dirty traffic into pine trees. God says, You cling to deixis like a life raft.Here, you say.Now, you say.All winter, you say, like it means something, days crossed off your compulsive calendar, wind tied to your wrist like a pet. This dumb hunger for fixity! I made your cells to shed, says God. See them everywhere, everywhere. She bites her lip till it bleeds. Who wouldn’t immanentize the eschaton, if they could, build heaven on earth in the backyard? She wouldn’t, is who. Day a slit-throated ewe. She wears a prayer around her neck in another language, no clue what it says. Who will translate the prayer? Listen: she loved a happy libertine and thought that was heaven. To ground herself she strips berries from the juniper bushes. Well, says God, Alexander the Great dyed his hair saffron. We are all made fools in this world.