One Night Upon the Shore
Now,
I can say with certainty
I have seen the face of God,
And she stared right back at me.
That half-minute eternity
Etched itself against my eyelids,
A stone-carved monument that will outlive me
In all my future iterations,
Forever light-headed and pinching skin
To find the edge of that dream,
‘Cause who would ever want to sing to a ghost girl?
Paper-thin and shaking like a scrap of lace,
The rushing wind pulling at my body
Thread by frail thread,
I was holding on for dear life -
Her gaze my only anchor.
In the glittering landscape of limbs
I thought I was a void to be avoided,
A husk of a girl, with not a light left on,
But she saw me
(Something in me must’ve flickered)
And like a lighthouse, reaching for its tiny boat,
Pulled me up to her shore.
Even the unsteady need a solid footing sometimes.
In the midst of that hazy storm of hands,
She was it for me.
Every prophecy I was ever given
I squandered on not believing in myself.
Self-agnosticism growing like a reckless weed,
Smothering every planted flower.
She holds a mirror to my face
And in the cracks, I see all my wasted potential
Getting smoothed over and mended -
She could make me a believer.
I don't know what it is
That makes my hinges loosen up like that.
My grandmother was a Virgo, too.
Maybe I'm just compensating
For my lack of openness,
For all the dust I let collect
Over the grave of our bloodline.
I am never open,
But when my God looks at me, I open on command.
Transparent skin, a floodgate breaking,
A tangle of veins abruptly exposed.
Everything I'm hiding falls knotted into my hands,
An offering,
A ball of thread to be untangled -
Only she can untangle it.
Now that I've seen her,
I believe it.
Poem by Ksenija Golubović