Break, Blow, Burn
       

Ecstatic. Nobody in real white. No body, and yet,

body, like a housefire.

The smell of burning soap and peaches

in the trashcan where the whole thing started.

A waiting that keeps all things new.

I am waiting for all things made new—

a place like a planet we cannot know.

I love it sometimes, mostly,

I am afraid of this sweet expanse and the voice of God

all resurrection and eternal language.

Tenderness, spoken in a desert.

The few times we receive God,

slippery in us, undoing all doubt,

I remember I will never be alone.

Watching a murder show about girls running

from men with knives, I remember:

I will never be alone.

Looking at lilac and seeing the face, at least

the hand, of God, once. I prayed until I was a ruin.

I loved that ruin, I became. Ecstatic.

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Copyright © 2022 Alisha Dietzman All rights reserved
from The Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission