RELIGION FOUND IN A CORPSE-CANDLE

after Outlander: Dragonfly In Amber

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She stumbled upon a corpse with bright, blue fungus thriving over his thin, white skin. They preserved his body like flowers in a vase: beautiful yet departed. She recalled how a soldier said once, “It makes you wonder where they live between battles.” The thought brought me to my knees, fingers searching the soil furtively for seeds that do not exist: a glimpse at how little we know beyond ourselves. I can picture how the blossoms would look permuting from my hands, vivid blooms cascading across my bony wrists and reaching towards my stilled bosom. This is how fiction is created, an image plucked and pressed like petals, captured and reinvented. I am not her. But she is all of us, facing the certainty that is death though buoyed by tiny miracles. It is, after all, how we approach faith. Often too tired to listen, we find dogma in the blooms that emerge from our bodies. Perhaps that is why our veins run blue under our skin, a whisper yet - of what is to come, of what has transpired.