And Thus Said God: "I AM Weak"

O.K. Mantz

Like a body wanting bones, my heart crumples to the ground; constructed of a thin layer of skin, like the brittle skin of leaves, it tears and wrinkles as it falls. I lie beside my deformed heart: both bleeding, both fetching out of empty ewers tears. An incision cut vertically across my chest renders my bosom open as a door, pinned in place on either side by two grotesquely giant nails; on the flat head of the first a calligraphic inscription reads “opus” and on the second “meum:” my own work. All, save one, of my ribs are broken; my lungs, deflated, situate impaled by my bones. Otherwise my chest remains as empty as the crumpled heart beside me, both lying amidst a pool of crimson snot. A nasty breeze pricks my skin and shifts my weightless corpse. In my left palm I then perceive a slimy globe, approximately twenty-four millimetres in diameter, and I gingerly twist my head and roll my sight to gaze down into my hand. A sickly, tawny brown pupil vomits discontent as I behold my own eye within my grasp. I cry out, painful agitation clutching fiercely at my neck and suffocating with great ease my dying soul. Yet no sound escapes between my broken teeth, for my tongue is caught inside my throat, put in chains and fastened to the pillar of my gullet. Stripped of even now my speech, I am fixed to stare into the starless, moonless night, where the sky appears as black as the impenetrable umbras that perpetually stride besides. Only faintly do I mark an eagle gliding swiftly across the vast and endless stretch of space, with something caught within its beak, flapping disgustingly as a banner in the wind. Just before passing out of sight, the banner becomes clear, and I observe the cold display— the bird carries the liver of my kingdom far away. But I am not compared to such; fire came not from my hands. My only weak addition was another suffering soul…

And then amidst a thousand hissing shades, I sense a form step closer, more tangible as light than the reflections of the dim. Ashamed, and wanting hope, I shrink into myself, allowing even my own eye to slip out of my grasp. Silent lips, set fervently in motion by the will to plead, beg for an unaimed arrow from Aram. But no impaling weapon comes: instead I feel a terror seize me so horrific my body nearly dissipates into sudden smoke. Helpless and frightened, I await the form to enter into view and mercilessly devour the remnants of my essence with inexplicable hate. Yet what steps out from the shadows of the night is not a dreadful behemoth to be feared: the very first impression made upon my rugged eye is a stream of light divine, as radiant as the full magnificence of a perfect glowing source. A deafening hiss rings deep within my ear and all the shadows flee; no room for ought else remains when an angel of such sanctity arrives. The light never fades, never loses a fragment of its initial glorious rays, but the image becomes clearer, as though through a crystal I now gaze. And with my pupil I behold a woman of such consummate proportions: oval follicles produces a hair so bold and soft; a chasmic and shining brown reflects with a smile the light emanating from her frame; a brilliant smile, without sharp edges, gleams outstanding; and a round, yet pointed chin completes the most compassionate and tender physiognomy my eyes have ever touched. Her frame stands strong, robust, and striking, without hiding the arresting feminine curves and touch of gentleness enrapturing her being.

Incapable of movement, I watch as she bends down and gingerly lifts the brittle skin of my heart and holds it up just as one would toast with a chalice of ambrosian wine. Then the woman moves and brings the tissue closer to her lips; and as she nears, the heart gradually begins to throb! At first a faint beating moves the muscle, but then as her lips commit to my failed heart, it swells in thickness and in weight, expanding and contracting in a vigorous rhythm that produces at first a hope, then a love, and then a heavenly infatuation with the angel and her sein. Once my myocardium assumes a healthy shape and colour, the woman steps closer and places the beating crimson clump inside my chest. With unsurpassed skill and tenderness, she repairs my broken ribs, tears the nails out (tossing them far into the dark), and shuts the bleeding flaps of my body, sewing them together with a sort of string or yarn procured from the depths of her bosom. She kneels down and retracts my tongue, unchaining the sliver from its pillar and attaching it to the engine of my larynx once more. The eye she squeezes into its hollow socket and the full capacity of vision at once returns to me. Now both my eyes behold the sight of her and she is revealed in her full glory, greater than the likes of any god.

And then she speaks and I immediately know her name. She speaks, and I realise with the full weight of the infinite that God has answered, God is gracious. And her voice penetrates through the starless, moonless night, sounding as the very manifestation of the sun, of the nightingale’s heart wrenching song translated through the mortal voicebox which is hers, and hers alone.

“Forgive thyself.”

Suddenly a great agitation overwhelms me and I am immediately reminded of the origin of my plight: as God began his works in thought, as did I. With the newfound range of motion I violently flail, screaming until my voice cracks and my larynx tears. Even deeper I procure from the ewer the tears required for weeping, grovelling with the weight of abject despair crushing my ribs anew. The magnitude of sorrow and affliction that grips me in that moment cannot be elucidated through any tongue, word, or sound except that of an infinitely far-reaching, chasmic, piercing, and horrific scream produced not by any mortal means, but by the voice of the cosmos quivering in the wake of its own finitude. And this scream produced by the cosmos resembles that produced of my own heart, which in its soul-shattering clarity says something the likes of this:

I cannot! I cannot! I cannot…

…not on my own.