Listen, Jonah

From inside this whale.

abstract blur grain orange

Let me take it back, what I once said about the flesh, before I felt the teeth of this machine. Now I say, give it back, my breath, a firstborn placenta, let me bury it. Don’t touch, I say now, but the cameras are everywhere, groping.

Now an overhead voice like an airport announcement, what do you think you are doing? Anything unattended in the age of terror will be removed by airport security. What do you think you are? What does it mean, in at this point, to answer back? 

I’m keeping the body, take my voice. Watch the tent as it tears, this is the belly of the whale.

Kick, Jonah. Do you think this is time around us, and was it here before now?  Let tired vows disappear by this remaking while another womb confronts us, an old beginning.

Author: Stacey C. Johnson

I keep watch and listen, mostly in dark places.

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