the stories preach

the danger of dissatisfaction

hunger, sin of witch and wendigo –

the woman who ate children, her children

devourer of family and of tribe.

but – surely there is some virtue in insatiability

in this complacent, complicit world –

what is wildfire but the redwood’s

first friend?

It is behind me again. I can feel it the way you feel light on closed eyelids, the heavy presence of heat on my back. What is it that they will not let me look at?

Sometimes I see my mother, standing in front of me. Sometimes I see a tall woman in a white coat, her chin too high. They keep their eyes on me, as though they do not see the thing behind me. It’s a test, I remind myself. A meditation against the dark. Keep your eyes in front of you, on the light, and you will succeed.

Is it a cave or a lab? I cannot remember. Or perhaps it is a school at midday, and I am sitting with my face forward, focused on my lunch, as though I do not know it is there, as though I cannot hear it.

The woman makes a note, and I keep my eyes fixed before me. I try to smile and she nods, as though I have done something right.

Is it still behind me? But I cannot ask, because I should know. Perhaps there is nothing at all behind me. But it is a test, remember. Does it matter, then, whether or not there really is something there in the dark?

The sound of breathing. I wish I had a mirror. But that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?

Only a few hours now. I can hear it pacing sometimes, but I keep my eyes forward. Did it touch me, or was that the whisper of a breeze?

I whisper the chants we sang in sunlight, but they mean nothing here, are of another language than the darkness.

They told me a story once, of a girl who looked back. They said that it devoured her alive, that it wasn’t really real until she saw it, as though she created it by looking. And I never told anyone, but once when we were at Christmas together I thought I saw her pass by the window of the house, her eyes flicking towards the tree. No one else saw her, but I glimpsed her again in the morning, her face white against the window of the train. Perhaps I imagined it, but there was a letter, too, one Mother wouldn’t show me… and why would I imagine her with a scar?

Is there anything behind me, or am I imagining it? Sometimes I imagine things, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Does it really matter if there is anything behind me?

What if they don’t come back? If they leave me here, waiting in the darkness below. The woman has gone out. There are no cameras, if I turn they would not know…

The inching of the head. Dawn’s light near the front of the cavern. Perhaps the sun has risen, and now I can look?

A quarter turned. My shoulders haven’t pivoted, it hardly counts. That is the light of the sun, isn’t it?

Footsteps, up above. They are coming now, coming to get me. I have passed the test, haven’t I? The woman and the lab, all a dream. I can look now.

Halfway turned, the head, the darkness deeper behind me, thicker and richer than the darkness of nighttime, unquiet. It would be a sin, if I finished, if I…

They are lowering the rope now, and I dare not look behind me. I wish, again, I had a mirror. What are they hiding? Why is it so important?

I walk forward. Snap the carabiner around the loop in my belt. I am facing forward now, facing the light. You can’t look back, not if you want to live in this world; that’s what they say.

Slowly rising. The sky the same blue, brighter than I remembered. Could the cave and the sky exist in the same world?

The rope twists, a few feet from the edge of the cavern, and for a moment my eyes settle on that far edge, that darkness once behind me, the abyss that leads back I know not where. Not a creature after all, but something white, a still, contorted shape, not unlike…

My feet against the earth. My mother holds me in her arms. So glad you made it, so glad you survived, you passed the…

Back in the world again, we do not speak of what we saw, or did not see below. That, too, is part of the test. A necessity of remaining.

I can still remember the girl’s new address, written in that delicate, shaking hand.

“Take me home,” I say, and she drags me forward, away, further into the sunlight.

I will not remember what I dreamed I saw, the night before, deep in that darkness. When I look back the hole that was the cave seems shallower, a simple dip in the ground.

Perhaps there is no cave at all.

 

 

knowledge does not damn us,

but only the knowing sin.

for while ignorance begets evil,

apathy lets it win.

she is midwife to the mother,

 

 

nursemaid to the child,

she who knows good from evil,

yet does not conscience reconcile.

 

 

Give us our daily bread, and 

(forgive this atheist

for supplicating the universe

in the words she was as a child taught;

empiricists have so little poetry

in their communions.)

 

i find myself as tongue-tied as the moses

who refused to answer god,

my head and heart

are lost like languages in the tower of babel,

for certainly we cannot, do not

understand each other. god’s practical joke?

the true mistake of humanity, i think

was not finishing the apple.

 

 

reassuring, to remember

that the world has always been ending

don’t the mayans, and jesus, and the scientists

all say so?

a second flood awaits us,

and perhaps a dove will bring

an olive branch

for this appalled and appalling

world.

 

though you

wrap your heart in bandages

leave clear your eyes

only the righteous dead deserve blindness;

they have done their time among us,

and suffered in ways we will never have to

again, perhaps.

 

 

in the next world, we will all be

artists, scientists, explorers;

in this one, we must be builders.

bridges,

not staircases or towers

will lead us to our god.