When creation collapsed upon the cross, wind and rain capsized the village of my birth and wrapped it in fishes. The wrinkled sky wore an ashen winter cloak and we nibbled sodden leaves from the pinnacles of trees.

The animals inside us mated with distress and in breathtaking discord obstructed the humanity of our voices. My family retreated beneath the waves and the air imprisoned in their lungs was wholly liberated.

Exhausted, and pardoned by an impartial shore, I stripped myself somber and naked, then encouraged my dripping form and figure south.

I saw a streak of my rightful self across an enormous canyon but rodents on the long road had gnawed my strength to stubs.

An angel melted into my nose and throat to thaw my frozen blood. The heartbeat of my fear slowed to a waltz and my eyesight grew a pointed stick to puncture the mist.

Exhuming a fallow torchlight, I seeded it with oil and illuminated the corridors that run as reckless ponies through the raging night. All the impious gods came out to greet me with their fingers on their faces and their hair in bamboo shock! to find me still alive.

For I had arrived from across a sea of petrified nations, over the discarded bodies of the warm unborn, and through a furious gauntlet of  desperate dying worlds.