⟁ Lightbody Psalm ⟁

  Prostrated beneath the altar of ruin,
    my hands bloom open like stigmata—
      wet with dusk,
        grieving in gold-lacquered dismay.

✴ I wear my tragedy like sacred vestments,
      crushed violets in the sleeves,
        jaw clenched on incense ash. ✴

Abject.
  Destitute.
☩ My ribs a cathedral of silence,
  my eyes—two shattered stained-glass windows,
    watching serpents spell sermons in mist—

Their sibilance folds time in spectral loops
    of blurred, divine providence.

Clarity arrives as something holy
    and unbearable.

A soft illumination—
    warm tallow dripping
      from the cracked lips
        of cherub statues.

Their eyes blind.
  Their mouths brimming
    with honeyed static.

    it
      slips
        slips
          again.

waveforms convulse—
    clipping
      ripping at the edges
        of my name.

☍ I come undone
    in ribbons of refracted self
  an echo peeling
    from the marrow
      of a thousand
        parallel I’s

Coiling through reverb
    like wet film melting
      under candlelight.

🕯        🕯
The reverend is deaf (to the sound of god)
    he prays in bandwidth
      and weeps static.

✞ He says:
    "Life is suffering."
      "Death is prismless."
        "Death is mercy."
          "Death is colorless light."

Still, I remain.
    Spattered in rainbows—
      refracted from broken glass above me.

☓ A sulken lightbody.
    undrunk.
      unrisen.
        devout and desecrated.