Half-washed slate
A shadow of the feral cat pauses before us. It is gone as we take in another drag.
“I feel bad for them,” Cora says, she eases the blunt from my fingers. In the corner of my eye glows the singed end. I look up at the stars, winking at us. We are standing in my backyard, walking though the knee high grass because it makes sense.
“Why?”
The question has its own body, as it rises from my mouth, encased in smoke that unfurls like the thoughts in recent days.
“They don’t know. They don’t watch the news,” she whispers, her voice rough by smoke.
“They know,” I say.
She pulls again. I feel Mary Jane kiss my chest, my throat, the burning salve that always saved me when life got rough.
The world is ending, truly, falling apart, like smoke, and questions, the answer so resounding, you wish you could pull it down and stand panting in the tatters. But yet, the horn blares, and another person is plucked up by the current of Heaven, twirling in the air naked as they are raptured away.
“What about Noah’s Ark?” I offer.
She sputters.
Cora went to Catholic school. She’s getting nervous because she hasn’t been pulled yet. They said its starting in the North, souls plucked up to the sky. I think of humans migrating as I look at the Big Dipper. Are we going to be tucked into a boat out there, in the night sky and sail off?
I look at Cora, she is staring at the blunt smoldering in the grass.
I was done anyway.
I look at her, etched in the moonlight, her arm crossed.
“Everything with a soul should go up there, that’s what I believe,” she whispers.
She hunches her shoulders, and crosses her arms. It’s a summer night. The crickets are trilling, playing on their fretted legs. The lightning bugs blink in the canopy. We are leaving the Earth as Eden.
I fret my eyebrows. Cora shakes a leg as she stands there, scrunched up.
I nudge her with a shoulder, “Afraid?”
She jerks her head in a no, “I believe.”
“Cora.”
Her eyes are on me in an instant, round and tearful.
“I want you to come too,” she whimpers, tears slide down her face like rain. I take her cheeks into my hands, feel them pool in my fingers. Mary Jane runs down my sternum, ache rises. I swallow.
“I will try,” I offer.
It never stuck, God, the Holy Trinity. I always wandered away from them, avoided the light, you could say, hiding in my doubts.
I never had a panic attack until Monday, when the first person was raptured. She was beautiful, glowing in the sun as she was lifted higher into its light, her black hair rippling like night against the blue sky.
Cora peels my hands off her face, her hands bond to the crook of my arm. Through tears she says, “I want to do Confession, I don’t think they would mind, I know I am not a priest, but I want to talk before… I want you to … If you want.”
The grass hisses as she beds down into the thick blades. I follow her as closely as a disciple. Her face is tucked into her chest. Her body shudders. The collar of her shirt is adorned in tears. I take her hand.
“How do we start?”
“We tell secrets, and we pray, it doesn’t have to be big - if you don’t want that. I’ll go - I’ll go. Dear Father, I have sinned,” she squeezes my hand, I watch as she scrunches her face, she is beautiful, “I have said you name in vain, and I am so sorry.”
Her face glitters with tears. She pulls away to brush them away with the heels of her hands, whimpering, “There.”
“What next?”
“Then I will pray, and I say, Hail Mary, Full of grace,” she takes my hand and studies our finger fixed together, “the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” Cora looks into my eyes. Her gaze softens, she sits up, her lips press to mine, I lean into her, and she pulls away, her eyes round with her tears, “Amen.”
I fret at her. I squeeze her hand and offer a grin.
“Don’t forget me when you -,”
“Please try! Try, Owen. Say a secret.”
I sigh. I never knew God well, but I wish to if he is the same light in Cora’s eyes.
Ache spreads through my chest, into my shoulders, up my throat.
“Dear.. God. I - have sinned. I never believed in you, I wanted to. I tried to -,”
“Keep talking.”
“I hated you after mom died.”
Cora stares at me she studies as a tear burns down my cheek.
“And you were doing what you needed. I am sorry for hating you, I-”
Cora places a finger to my lips, she nods.
“That’s enough, Owen.”
She kisses me, and I mesh with her, our aged breath mixing together in the dark of an August night, until, I see a light, and it takes me.
*
Art is by Eli McMullen.