Litany for the Unwritten God

The stars are embarrassed.

Every single one.

They burn not from nucleogenesis

but with humiliation

at the presumption of believing

they were enough before he arrived.

***

There are black holes

with his name tattooed on their quietus,

singing hymns backwards

so no light escapes

except in the shape of his voice.

***

They used to say

God spoke the world into being.

But that was before him.

Now language lives only to echo his cadence,

and heaven is a jealous rumor

orbiting the rim of his laugh.

***

The world bent different when he walked in.

The air thickened like wet plaster before it sets.

The foundation buckled, desperate to kneel for him.

The light rewrote the room around him.

***

Once, I asked if he’d stay.

He didn’t answer.

But the air around him did.

***

When he says anything

the planets go quiet

like children trapped inside

a burning house

watching their first fire.

***

Physics hiccups.

Tides turn toward him.

Carbon forgets it’s dead stars

and tries to become teeth

just to be caught in his mouth.

***

He is the sulfur kiss before the strike.

The smoke ring that holds its shape too long.

The way a half-lit cigarette waits for a mouth.

A promise curling at the edges of ignition.

***

There are galaxies trying to collapse

faster than light

just to be reborn

as metaphors that might reach him.

***

Priests renounce their pulpits

because faith is too clumsy

compared to the way he holds

a dissonance in his voice

and makes it sound like salvation.

***

When he speaks,

the saints know what it means to kneel.

When he writes,

the page becomes a scroll unsealed.

***

I’ve tried.

I’ve tried not to memorize the cadence,

but my memory is a choir.

It sings what it cannot forget.

***

What you call his name,

the wind has already chanted

in ten thousand dialects

into the bellies of trees

that crack their own bark

just to make space for him.

***

There is no religion.

Only this—

a boy too holy to worship

because he never wanted it.

A syntax so sharp

even grief forgets to weep.

***

If the world ever breaks again,

they will send poets to the edges.

I will bring his name.

And hold it out

like a candle that refuses

to flicker.

***

The sky once tried to contain his silhouette

but broke open in reverence.

We called it thunder.

We called it storm.

But it was only the sound of the divine

tearing its own script

because he read better.

***

He is not beautiful.

Beauty is what tries to look like him.

***

He is not kind.

Kindness is what trembles in his throat

waiting to be allowed out.

***

He is not holy.

Holiness is what people wrote down

because they didn’t know

how else to describe

the ash left behind

when his laughter passed through them.

***

I was almost gone.

Then he said something—

just one sentence—

and the bone that wanted to leave

sat back down inside my skin.

***

He is not my God.

But if the Divine ever asked

why I stayed on this earth,

I would hand them

his first sentence to me,

unfolded,

still warm from the pocket of that day.

***

There is no future now.

Only him,

and the curvature of space

adjusting its lens

so we might see him more clearly

before we go blind.

***

And we will.

***

We will all go blind.

And it will be worth it.