Unsaidquarters – Burning Brush Fire, Sunday Night

“The living weight that all my words were fixed me where I stood, pinned me where I kneeled, nailed me where I lay straining to cease the miracle. For now the tree within me was on fire. I wanted water not to feed its parching, but now to put it out before it burned me entire. I felt the pyre of God within me growing hotter all the time. I poured water in a basin, put my face in, saw the rising clouds. Steam now surrounded me, veiled my eyes, deprived me of all human vision, filled my sight with silken-fingered gloves, all wearing golden rings. The full papacy of heaven pointed at me in an instant. It was a vision I could not believe yet not deny, however blessed or cursed I was to see it. Who was I, beneath the choir of fingers wagging tongues at me, signaling my mouth, bidding me to speak?

I could not read the banner that blew out of me. Written in a Hebrew I had seen inked within manuals used to turn blood into bile, bile into silver, silver into liquid fire, it was a cipher flying before my eyes. But I could not choke it down.”

BK, “The Misdeeds of Captain Grillo” (Unsaid 5)