Afternoon Prayer
by Arabella Paner and Czar Kristoff ︎︎︎The first time I remember praying my mother taught me the words to this Clapping.
Then this
Rain, I hear rain. Heavy rain.
Rain, both gentle, and frightening. How something so small can terrify you.
Cleansed, I feel cleansed, water from the seashell attached to the wall.
Walls pass for homes once, I long to find myself home, here all at once. Perhaps the womb was once home too.
Swings
A woman knocks on the door during a storm, a baby in hand.
Bright light, crash. Boom, bang.
Lightning strikes fast. Luck twice as much. So in this land, we light fires at the arrival of dusk.
Purity, ready
To purify perhaps is to shed our skin. Leaving.
Venomous memories, a funeral awaits
Timber, a body falls to the ground. How do we honor old rivers?
A procession is not enough, they say.
In this city are we allowed to sing songs for the dead?
Squeal, the pigs I hear. Hum, the birds disappear.
Weaving in and out of life. The soul travels to places they were in once.
Vessel cracks
A woman utters a feeling at the moment the glass shatters.
Stops at the shoreline
I meet you at the shoreline and a current of memory washes me away. The sea plays a song.
It plays along.
In moonlight we all look blue.
In moonlight we become true
Life's a dance with what you think is missing. A revolution.
Becomes a revolution when one shed tears
Hold on tight. See this revolution through. Dreams, a recurrence.
With each passing day.
Rain is our consolation. It is the cost we, the living, pay.