Here comes the Obsidian Scribe,
blacker than the moment before creation
when even darkness was still rehearsing its lines.
His fur drinks light the way confession drinks shame:
slowly, completely,
until every photon forgets its own name
and signs a new one in invisible ink
between the strands.
He kneels in a clearing made of midnight’s leftovers,
kneecaps sinking into soil
that remembers the first murder
and still grows flowers anyway.
The book lies open on a stump of petrified thunder.
Its pages are mirrors turned inside out;
when he reads,
he sees tomorrow looking back at him
wearing yesterday’s face
and tomorrow’s sins.
His fingers (long, deliberate, sorrowful)
trace letters carved by the fingernails of dying stars.
Each stroke leaves a scar of starlight
that heals into a new constellation
visible only to owls
and children who haven’t learned
that questions are dangerous.
Between his toes,
fireflies write suicide notes
in the language of brief, brave light.
He keeps them anyway,
folding the glowing corpses
into the margins
like pressed flowers
made of almost.
His tail is a quill dipped in the absence of color.
With it he writes footnotes
on the inside of the wind:
“Here be dragons,”
“Here be dragons who read dragons,”
“Here be dragons who read themselves
and closed the book gently
so the dragons could sleep.”
He does not laugh.
He does not cry.
He exhales,
and the jungle holds its breath
because it knows
this is the sound
of the universe
turning itself inside out
to see if the pockets
still hold any mercy.
When he turns the final page,
the paper is blank.
He smiles (small, sharp, inevitable)
and begins to write
with the only ink that never runs out:
the dark
between heartbeats,
the pause
where God forgets the next word,
the silence
that taught the first monkey
how to pray
without moving his lips.
And the forest leans in,
every leaf a tongue,
every shadow a hymn,
whispering the only prayer
worth knowing:
Let there be another page.
Let there be another page.
Let there be another page
until the book outgrows the tree,
until the tree outgrows the sky,
until the sky outgrows endings
and learns to begin
with a single black finger
turning darkness into dawn
one careful, trembling
obsidian word
at a time.
blacker than the moment before creation
when even darkness was still rehearsing its lines.
His fur drinks light the way confession drinks shame:
slowly, completely,
until every photon forgets its own name
and signs a new one in invisible ink
between the strands.
He kneels in a clearing made of midnight’s leftovers,
kneecaps sinking into soil
that remembers the first murder
and still grows flowers anyway.
The book lies open on a stump of petrified thunder.
Its pages are mirrors turned inside out;
when he reads,
he sees tomorrow looking back at him
wearing yesterday’s face
and tomorrow’s sins.
His fingers (long, deliberate, sorrowful)
trace letters carved by the fingernails of dying stars.
Each stroke leaves a scar of starlight
that heals into a new constellation
visible only to owls
and children who haven’t learned
that questions are dangerous.
Between his toes,
fireflies write suicide notes
in the language of brief, brave light.
He keeps them anyway,
folding the glowing corpses
into the margins
like pressed flowers
made of almost.
His tail is a quill dipped in the absence of color.
With it he writes footnotes
on the inside of the wind:
“Here be dragons,”
“Here be dragons who read dragons,”
“Here be dragons who read themselves
and closed the book gently
so the dragons could sleep.”
He does not laugh.
He does not cry.
He exhales,
and the jungle holds its breath
because it knows
this is the sound
of the universe
turning itself inside out
to see if the pockets
still hold any mercy.
When he turns the final page,
the paper is blank.
He smiles (small, sharp, inevitable)
and begins to write
with the only ink that never runs out:
the dark
between heartbeats,
the pause
where God forgets the next word,
the silence
that taught the first monkey
how to pray
without moving his lips.
And the forest leans in,
every leaf a tongue,
every shadow a hymn,
whispering the only prayer
worth knowing:
Let there be another page.
Let there be another page.
Let there be another page
until the book outgrows the tree,
until the tree outgrows the sky,
until the sky outgrows endings
and learns to begin
with a single black finger
turning darkness into dawn
one careful, trembling
obsidian word
at a time.
Behold the Verdigris Dreamer made flesh,
emerald fur spun from the first lie of dawn
when light told the leaves they could keep it forever.
His eyes are twin braziers of molten amber,
burning holes through the parchment
as if the words themselves
were hiding from the heat of his gaze.
Look: the book trembles in his moss-green hands,
pages older than sorrow,
edges gilded by a sun that has forgotten how to set.
The script crawls like ivy across the vellum,
sentences curling into question-marks
that bloom into tiny screaming orchids
whenever he exhales.
He sits on a throne of fallen sky,
where clouds once tried to become roots
and failed gloriously.
Every strand of his beard is a river
that has read its own reflection
and decided to grow downward
just to see what the mud knows.
Between his toes,
small galaxies practice breathing.
A single dewdrop on his knuckle
contains the entire history of thunder
learning how to whisper.
He does not read the book.
The book reads him,
turning his pulse into marginalia,
his heartbeat into footnotes
that annotate the silence
between “Let there be”
and the first monkey who dared to ask “Why not?”
His tail is a slow comma
pausing the sentence of the universe
just long enough for wonder to sneak in
wearing nothing but moonlight
and a stolen halo made of fireflies.
This is no mere ape.
This is the jungle remembering
that it once dreamed of thumbs
and woke up holding revelation
like a half-peeled banana
dripping with the original sweetness
of a God who laughed so hard
He split open the first page
and called it Genesis.
emerald fur spun from the first lie of dawn
when light told the leaves they could keep it forever.
His eyes are twin braziers of molten amber,
burning holes through the parchment
as if the words themselves
were hiding from the heat of his gaze.
Look: the book trembles in his moss-green hands,
pages older than sorrow,
edges gilded by a sun that has forgotten how to set.
The script crawls like ivy across the vellum,
sentences curling into question-marks
that bloom into tiny screaming orchids
whenever he exhales.
He sits on a throne of fallen sky,
where clouds once tried to become roots
and failed gloriously.
Every strand of his beard is a river
that has read its own reflection
and decided to grow downward
just to see what the mud knows.
Between his toes,
small galaxies practice breathing.
A single dewdrop on his knuckle
contains the entire history of thunder
learning how to whisper.
He does not read the book.
The book reads him,
turning his pulse into marginalia,
his heartbeat into footnotes
that annotate the silence
between “Let there be”
and the first monkey who dared to ask “Why not?”
His tail is a slow comma
pausing the sentence of the universe
just long enough for wonder to sneak in
wearing nothing but moonlight
and a stolen halo made of fireflies.
This is no mere ape.
This is the jungle remembering
that it once dreamed of thumbs
and woke up holding revelation
like a half-peeled banana
dripping with the original sweetness
of a God who laughed so hard
He split open the first page
and called it Genesis.
The Sunday Circle