Call it Even
David Drury
Even crummy houses see. Even dead birds perceive. Even hotels—down to the girders--hear the sound when a heart in the elevator begins to crack. Even dry wells lie heavy. Even sea beds are unmade. Even skyscrapers scrape against it. Even then. Even now. Even as we speak. We do not carry it alone. Even puddles reflect. Even clouds bruise. Even cowgirls get the blues. Even glaciers get heated. Even mastodons in standing caskets bellow. Even the demons believe. Even the forests are burning. Even snowcaps are welling up. Even the rocks cry out. Even the teeth of the venerable oak chatters above a raked mash of fallen leaves. Even the cathedral christ refuses to come down off of the cross, until the solidarity with suffering has ended.
Meanwhile, the universe is racing to expand. It is new at the edges. Somewhere, inside a great cloud of particles, a star is breaking into life with the letters of your name scratched into its plasma core and sunspots to match every bruise. The galaxies are preparing to mobilize. On your behalf, the star is preparing to speak—a mother’s heart with a megaphone standing in the back of an army jeep.
Meanwhile, the universe is racing to expand. It is new at the edges. Somewhere, inside a great cloud of particles, a star is breaking into life with the letters of your name scratched into its plasma core and sunspots to match every bruise. The galaxies are preparing to mobilize. On your behalf, the star is preparing to speak—a mother’s heart with a megaphone standing in the back of an army jeep.
David lives in Seattle, Washington. His fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio, published in Best American Nonrequired Reading and is forthcoming in Atticus Review, Pidgeonholes and ZYZZYVA. He studied Interdisciplinary Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, and has been kicked out of every casino in Las Vegas.