Love Without Borders
Chapter Twenty-Four
The face arrives before I do.
I am walking, have been walking, will go on walking for what feels like minutes or hours or the last sliver of forever, and the face is already here, has been here before the grey began, before the dying, before the highway and the rain and the ice and the three cars and the seven strangers and the April of my sister’s death and the Tuesday of her last breath. The face was here before any of it. The face was here before there was a here for it to be in. I know this the way the body knows heat, the way the skin knows fire, the way a man standing too close to an open furnace knows without looking that the door is open and the coals are white and the air between him and the heat has become the heat, has become part of the thing it once separated him from.
The air has become the face.
I do not mean this as metaphor. I have spent my life and my death constructing metaphors, reaching for approximations, placing the closest available word next to the thing and leaving a margin where a better word might go if one could be found. The margin is gone. The approximation is gone. The thing itself is here, and the thing itself is not a word and is not a concept and is not the warm, scarred, pursuing nearness I kept at the edge of my awareness through all the measureless grey. That nearness was the shadow of this. That warmth was the reflection of this. That scarred quality, the grief that matched mine, was the whisper of this, the candle held up at a distance to represent a sun that could not be brought into the room without consuming the room.
The sun is in the room. The room is the sun. The distinction between the space and the presence occupying it has collapsed, the way the distinction between a note and its resonance collapses when the note is held long enough and loud enough that the resonance becomes the air, becomes the medium, becomes the only thing the ear can register because there is nothing left that is not the note.
There is nothing left that is not the face.
I am standing, and I am being seen, and the seeing is not the dim, edge-of-awareness impression I could keep my back to in the grey. The seeing is total. The seeing is the air I breathe and the ground I stand on and the light that fills the space, which is not a space, which is not a room, which is not the grey and not the world and not any place I can name with the vocabulary the living gave me or the dead have taught me. The place is the presence. The place is the face. I am standing inside the face the way a man stands inside a cathedral, except that the cathedral is aware of him, and the awareness is the walls, and the walls are also the ceiling and the floor and the light coming through the windows, and the windows are also eyes, and the eyes know his name.
The eyes know my name. The eyes know the name and the grief and the argument and the sister and the April and the Tuesday and the ceiling that stayed empty and the prayer that went unanswered and the parking lot where the light fell in flat rectangles on a blanket and a girl who loved beetles and held her pencil wrong and said I think the something-after is good.
The eyes know all of it. And the knowing is the fire.
I need to describe this. The copy editor in me, the instinct that notices when things do not hold up, the precision that has been my tool and my weapon and my armor since the first day I sat down with someone else’s manuscript and found the errors they could not see, requires me to describe this. To put the right word next to the right thing. To annotate the margin. To render, in language that a reader could follow, what it is to stand in the full, unveiled, totally immediate presence of something that is not a something but is instead the source of every something, the ground beneath every ground, the face behind every face, the love beneath every love and every failure to love and every refusal to be loved.
I cannot describe it. The language breaks against it the way waves break against a seawall, and the seawall does not move, and the waves do not stop, and the breaking goes on, and what I am left with is not a description but a series of failed approximations that point toward the thing without reaching it, the way my whole argument has been pointing toward something it could not quite touch, the way my whole grief has been a finger pointed at a wound too deep for the finger to find the bottom of.
What I can say is this: the fire is not punishment.
I said this in the grey, said it to myself as the warmth pressed and the grey thinned and the direction pulled me forward, and I need to say it again now because the fire is so much more intense here, so much more concentrated, so much more present that the temptation to file it as punishment is almost overwhelming. The argument would like to file it. The argument would like very much to add this to the evidence box: Exhibit Z: Having refused to provide a defense, the defendant resorts to coercion by fire. But the fire is not coercion. The fire is not the heat of an assailant. The fire is the heat of being known, completely, without residue, without the buffer of the grey and without the merciful vagueness that the grey provided, the not-quite-seeing that allowed me to stand in the pursuing nearness and still keep my back to it, to feel the warmth and call it a diffuse, general, depersonalized phenomenon rather than what it was, which was a face, which was a person, which was the specific, particular, devastatingly intimate gaze of someone who knows exactly who I am and knows exactly what I carry and knows exactly what I did with the prayers and the grief and the April and the years and the folded arms and is looking at me anyway.
Looking at me. Not past me. Not through me. Not at the general idea of me or the philosophical category of me or the case-study version of me that the argument has been presenting. At me. Micah. Twenty-nine. Five months from thirty, which is a number that died when I died but which the knowing does not seem to care about, because the knowing is not counting, the knowing is not measuring, the knowing is not sorting me into a bin or filing me under a heading or reducing me to a type. The knowing is looking at the particular, unrepeatable, once-in-all-of-existence person who stood in a hospital room and watched his sister die and built an argument on the death and carried the argument through the living and the dying and the grey and the summons and into this, this place that is not a place, this presence that is not an ambient phenomenon but a person, a face, a looking-at that sees everything and flinches from nothing.
The arms fold tighter. The muscles in the restored body protest. The fire presses.
I hold.
Sloane
The armor burns.
Not the way a furnace burns, not the way a match burns, not the way the god of the house burned with his quiet, controlled, ledger-keeping anger when a rule was broken and a line was crossed and an entry was required in the notebook. That burning was cold. That burning was surveillance. That burning was the particular, meticulous, angular heat of a man who catalogued infractions and administered consequences with the same careful handwriting he used for receipts and grocery lists, and the burning was survivable because the burning had edges and the edges could be mapped and the mapping was the armor, the armor was the mapping, the armor was built precisely on the knowledge of where the heat was and where the cold was and where the safe places were and where the unsafe places were, and the building was the control, and the control was the survival.
This burning has no edges. This burning is not the god of the house. This burning is not surveillance and not calculation and not the careful, angular administration of a man behind a desk with a pen. This burning is the opposite of every burning I have known, because every burning I have known had a source I could locate and a temperature I could gauge and a distance I could maintain, and the maintaining was the armor, and the armor was the self, and the self has always, always, always known where the heat is coming from and how far away to stand.
I do not know where this heat is coming from. I do not know because the heat is coming from everywhere. The heat is the air. The heat is the ground. The heat is the light, which is not the light of the grey, which was no light, which was the absence of light disguised as dimness, and is not the light of the world, which was the sun and the lamps and the headlights and the flat rectangles the parking-lot lights threw through hospital windows. This light is personal. This light has a quality the word light cannot carry, a quality the word warm cannot hold, a quality that sits in the gap between every word I reach for and every word I fail to find, and the gap is the place where the armor falls apart, because the armor was built on words, the armor was built on categories, the armor was built on the careful, meticulous, angular distinction between this and that and safe and unsafe and inside and outside, and the distinctions are dissolving, and the dissolving is the fire.
The fire does not keep a ledger.
I have said this before, in the grey, said it as the warmth pressed and the nearness persisted and the patience refused to give me the rejection I was bracing for. I have said it like a warning, like a diagnosis, like the clinical assessment of a woman who has survived by knowing exactly what kind of threat she is facing and developing the precise countermeasure. The fire does not keep a ledger. The fire does not calculate. The fire does not sit behind a desk with a pen and make entries. The fire simply looks, and the looking is total, and the total is the terror, because a total looking means a looking that includes Colette.
Colette. The name is a flame inside the flame. The name is the specific, pinpoint, surgical heat at the center of the general heat, the way a welding torch has a blue point at its center that is hotter than the outer flame, and the blue point is Colette, and the blue point is the stairs, and the blue point is the words, and the blue point is the box of paints, and the blue point is the trust, and the blue point is the using, and the blue point is the sorry I have never spoken, and the fire sees all of it, and the fire does not flinch.
The fire does not flinch. The god of the house would have flinched. The god of the house would have recoiled. The god of the house would have reached for the pen and the notebook and the careful, angular handwriting and made an entry and assigned a consequence, and the consequence would have been legible, and the legible would have been survivable, because a consequence I can read is a consequence I can brace for, and the bracing is the armor, and the armor is the self. But the fire does not reach for the pen. The fire does not assign a consequence. The fire sees Colette’s face and does not recoil. The fire sees what I did and does not turn away.
And the not-turning-away is the thing I cannot survive.
Micah
I am trying to see the Throne. I use the word trying because the seeing is not simple, the seeing is not the mechanical operation of eyes and optics and light falling on a retina and being processed by a visual cortex. The seeing is something else. The seeing is the whole body. The seeing is the skin and the bones and the hands, the hands that came back first in the grey when the resurrection began, the hands that caught my balance when the staggering came, the hands that folded the arms back into their position of principled refusal. The hands are seeing. The skin is seeing. Every surface of the restored, resurrected, impossibly physical body is registering what is in front of me, and what is in front of me is not in front of me. What is in front of me is around me. What is in front of me is the medium I stand in, the air I breathe, the ground my feet press against, and the pressing-against is the seeing, and the seeing is the knowing, and the knowing is fire.
But there is something at the center. Something that the word throne reaches toward without grasping, the way my whole vocabulary has been reaching toward things without grasping them since the grey began. A solidity. A density. A concentration of the presence that is everywhere into a point that is somewhere, the way a sun concentrates the light that fills a solar system into a single burning disc, and the disc is not the light, the disc is the source of the light, and the source is ahead of me, above me, through me, and the prepositions fail, because the source is not locatable in the way that prepositions locate things. The source is not there in the way a chair is there or a building is there. The source is there in the way a truth is there, in the way a grief is there, in the way the fact of my sister’s death is there even when I am not thinking about it, a presence beneath every other presence, a ground beneath every ground, and the ground is the Throne, and the Throne is the face, and the face is looking at me.
White. The word arrives, though color is the wrong category, because what I am registering is not a wavelength of light hitting the rods and cones. What I am registering is purity. What I am registering is the absolute absence of anything that is not itself, the way white is the absence of coloring, the way silence is the absence of noise, the way truth is the absence of the lie that has been covering it. The Throne is white in the sense that it is utterly, terrifyingly, completely what it is. There is nothing mixed in it. There is nothing alloyed with it. There is nothing decorating it or softening it or mediating it. The Throne is the un-mediated. The Throne is the thing without the buffer. The Throne is the fire without the grey between us, and the grey was the buffer, and the buffer is gone, and the gone is the reason the fire is no longer the warm pressing at the edge of my awareness but is instead the air I am standing in, the light I am seeing by, the knowledge I am being known with.
Beside the Throne, or within the Throne, or as the Throne, because the distinctions do not hold, because the furniture is the person and the person is the furniture and the room is the face and the face is the room: something that looks like a book. Something that looks like a record. Something that the argument in me wants very badly to classify as a ledger, because a ledger is evidence, and evidence is the thing my case requires, and my case is the only thing I have left, the only thing I brought through the grey and the summons and the resurrection and into this place that is not a place.
But the book is not a ledger. The book is not an accusation. I can feel this in the way the fire touches it, in the way the presence relates to it, in the quality of the looking that includes the book without reducing the looking to the book. The book is open. The book has pages. The book has a page with my name on it, and the page with my name does not have the quality of a warrant or an indictment or a list of charges or the careful, angular handwriting of a man behind a desk. The page has the quality of recognition. The page says: I know who you are. The page says: I have always known who you are. The page says: The knowing is not the problem. The knowing was never the problem.
The problem is that I am known and am still being offered what I have spent my life refusing.
I stand in the fire and the fire does not consume me and the not-consuming is worse than consuming would be.
I need to explain this, because the argument needs to explain it, because the argument has been my way of processing reality since I was fifteen and June was twelve and the doctors used words I had to look up later and the looking-up was the first act of the argument, the first motion of the mind that would spend the next fourteen years building a case against a God who let a girl hold a pencil wrong and love beetles and say the something-after was good, and then die anyway, slowly, in a bed that was too wide for her and a room that smelled like antiseptic and the particular, cloying sweetness of flowers that people bring when they do not know what else to bring.
Consuming would be simple. Consuming would be the fire as enemy, the fire as opponent, the fire as the thing the defendant does to the accuser when the accuser gets too close. Consuming would validate the case. Consuming would prove the point. Consuming would be the final, definitive, irrefutable piece of evidence that the God I have been arguing against is exactly the God I said He was: distant, indifferent, willing to let a girl die and then willing to burn the man who dared to ask why.
But the fire is not consuming. The fire is not an enemy. The fire is the same thing the warmth was in the grey and the scarred nearness was in the dim country and the pursuing presence was through all the measureless waiting, only now the fire is that thing without the distance, without the filter, without the grey between us. The fire is love. I can feel it. The fire is love and the love is the agony and the agony is not a punishment inflicted from outside but a friction generated from inside, the friction of a self pressed against a love it will not receive, the way a hand pressed against a hot surface burns not because the surface intends harm but because the hand will not pull away, because the hand belongs to a man who has decided that pulling away would be surrender, and surrender would be the end of the argument, and the end of the argument would be the end of Micah.
Except that it would not be the end of Micah. Somewhere beneath the argument, in the place where June’s voice lives, in the place where the comma presses between I think the something-after and is good, I know that the end of the argument would be the beginning of Micah. The real Micah. The Micah who existed before the argument, the Micah who sat on his sister’s hospital bed and did the crossword with her and laughed at her handwriting and loved her without any argument at all, the Micah who was just a boy who loved his sister and lost her and did not know what to do with the losing except to turn it into a case and carry the case into the dark.
That Micah is here. Somewhere behind the arms. Somewhere behind the case. Somewhere behind the charge and the evidence and the fourteen years of prosecutorial grief. That Micah is the one the fire is reaching for, and the reaching is the love, and the love is the agony, and the agony is the fire.
The arms fold. The case holds. The fire presses.
Sloane
I see the Throne and the seeing shatters every category I have.
The god of the house sat in a chair. A leather chair in the study, behind the desk, with the pen and the notebook and the lamp that threw sharp shadows and the door that closed with a particular sound, the sound of a latch engaging, the sound of privacy becoming surveillance, the sound of a child understanding that the room she has been summoned to is not a room but a courtroom and the man in the chair is not her father but her judge and the judgment has already been made and the chair is only the place where the verdict is announced.
The Throne is not a chair. The Throne is not a piece of furniture. The Throne is not something someone sits in. The Throne is something someone is. The Throne is the presence made visible, made spatial, made into the thing the eyes can land on when the rest of the presence is too large and too close and too everywhere for the eyes to process, the way the sun is the thing the eyes land on when the light that fills the sky is too diffuse and too sourceless and too everywhere to look at directly, and the landing is a relief and a blinding, and the relief and the blinding happen at the same time.
White. The word means something different here than it means in the world where white is a color and a color is a property and a property is something a thing has without being the thing. Here, white is what the Throne is. White is the nature. White is the quality of being nothing other than what you are, holding nothing back, hiding nothing, mixed with nothing, the sheer, absolute, uncut reality of a thing that has never pretended to be something other than itself. The Throne is white the way a confession is true. The Throne is white the way a wound is open. The Throne is white the way a love that has no conditions is terrifying, because a thing without conditions is a thing without edges, and a thing without edges is a thing the armor cannot map, and the mapping is the armor, and the armor is the self.
And beside the Throne, or within the Throne, or as part of the seeing that is the Throne: a book. Open. Pages turned to a place that has my name on it, and the name is not written in careful, angular handwriting. The name is not an entry in a ledger. The name is recognition, the kind of recognition that happens when someone looks at you and knows not just what you have done but why you did it, not just the action but the wound beneath the action, not just Colette but the kitchen floor, not just the stairs but the god of the house, not just the cruelty but the vow that made the cruelty possible and the twelve-year-old girl who made the vow necessary by setting her jaw on a cold linoleum floor and deciding, with the desperate, absolute, total commitment of a child who has just learned that trust is a weapon that can be used against her, that she would never, never, never be open again.
The book sees the girl. The Throne sees the girl. The fire sees the girl. And the seeing does not recoil.
The not-recoiling. Again. Always. The thing the armor cannot process, the data the architecture was not designed to accommodate, the input for which no subroutine exists. The seeing does not recoil. The fire sees Colette and does not recoil. The fire sees the stairs and does not recoil. The fire sees the using and does not recoil. The fire sees the sorry I have never spoken and the speaking I have never done and the opening I have never permitted and the vulnerability I swore off at twelve on a kitchen floor in cold pajamas with dry eyes, and the fire does not recoil.
The fire says come.
The come is louder here. The come has the quality of the Throne behind it, the total, un-mediated, un-buffered, un-greyed quality of a word spoken not from a distance but from the center, from the source, from the place where the word was born before it was ever whispered through the grey. The come in the grey was the echo. This come is the voice. And the voice is the fire. And the fire is the love. And the love is the thing the armor was built to keep out and cannot keep out because the armor has no surface that the love cannot see through, no wall the love cannot feel through, no jaw the love cannot soften with the sheer, persistent, inexhaustible fact of wanting her, wanting me, wanting the girl on the kitchen floor and the woman she became and the cruelty she practiced and the sorry she withheld and the whole, brittle, exhausted, terrified fortress she built over the girl’s body like a mausoleum, and wanting is the wrong word, wanting is too small, wanting is a human word for a human appetite, and this is not appetite, this is something else, this is the ground wanting the seed, the ocean wanting the river, the home wanting the child who left, and the wanting does not care about the wall, and the not-caring is the crisis.
I hold the armor. The armor burns. The holding continues.
Micah
Around me, in the fire, in the light that is the fire, in the presence that is the light: others.
I did not notice them at first. The fire was too total, the seeing too immediate, the Throne too overwhelming for me to register anything except the fact of being known and the agony of being known while refusing the one who knows. But the others are here, and the others are visible, and the others are not burning.
The others are standing in the same fire I am standing in. The same light, the same presence, the same Throne, the same looking-at. They are in the same place, breathing the same air, held by the same knowing. And they are not burning. They are resting. They are standing the way a person stands in sunlight on a warm day, the way a body receives the heat it was made for, the way skin opens its pores to a temperature it recognizes as home. Their faces are turned toward the Throne the way mine is turned toward the Throne, and the turning is the same, the direction is the same, the fire is the same.
But for them the fire is not fire. For them the fire is glory.
I see this. I see the difference, and the difference is not in the fire. The difference is in the receiving. They are receiving what I am refusing, and the receiving turns the fire into warmth, into light, into the thing that the nearness always was when I kept it at the edge, the thing it always would have been if I had turned toward it and opened my arms instead of folding them, and the opening is the difference, and the difference is the glory, and the glory and the agony are the same love experienced from opposite positions, and I am on the wrong side of the experience, and the wrong side is the side I chose, and the choosing is the argument, and the argument is the arms.
I see Reed. I see him without seeing him, without the mechanical process of eyes finding a figure in a crowd, because this is not a crowd and this is not seeing. I register him. I feel his presence the way a tuning fork feels the vibration of a note it is tuned to: recognition without effort, knowledge without search. Reed. Twenty-eight. Car A. The one who managed everything, the one who sorted and controlled and measured and could not, in the end, manage his own soul. Reed is standing in the fire and the fire is glory and Reed is home, and the home has the quality of a man who has finally set down every tool and every plan and every competence and is simply standing, for the first time in his life, with nothing in his hands, and the nothing is not terrifying, the nothing is the gift, the nothing is the thing the managing was preventing.
I see Naomi. Naomi who shared the house and the hall and the Sunday mornings of sleeping late while the churches filled with the people she could not forgive and the god she could not face. Naomi who knew the name of the thing she refused and refused it with her eyes open and her teeth clenched and her memory of every cruel Sunday intact. She is standing in the fire and the fire is glory and Naomi is singing, or something that has the quality of singing, some expression that the body makes when the voice is not enough, when the mouth cannot carry the thing the self needs to release, and the release is not fury and not accusation and not the wary, sharp, braced-for-harm posture she wore in the grey. The release is worship, and the worship is not the worship of the god she fled. The worship is something else. The worship is the response of a woman who has discovered that the One she was afraid of was never the one they taught her.
I see Quinn. Quinn who ran, who numbed, who could not be still, who filled every silence with noise and every stillness with motion, who treated the grey the way she treated the living world, as a series of sensations to be fled from or drowned in. Quinn is still. Quinn is standing in the fire and the fire is glory and Quinn is still, perfectly still, the stillness of a woman who has finally stopped running and has not died of it, who has been fully known and has not been destroyed by the knowing, and the stillness is its own kind of singing.
I see them. My housemates. My people. The ones I loved in the kitchen at 412 Garfield, the ones I stayed up late with arguing about politics and God and whether the universe had a purpose, the ones who found me when the grief was too heavy for one person and the argument was too large for one mind. They are here. They are in the fire. They are glory.
And I am fire. The same fire. The same presence. The same Throne, the same looking-at, the same love. The difference is not the love. The difference is the arms. The difference is the argument. The difference is fourteen years of a folded posture that I built to hold a grief and turned into a weapon and carried all the way from a hospital room in April to this place that is not a place, this presence that is not an ambient force but a person, this fire that is not punishment but is the same love that Reed stands in and Naomi sings in and Quinn rests in, the same love I am refusing, and the refusing is the burning, and the burning is the agony, and the agony is the difference between glory and fire.
The difference is me.
Sloane
Daniel.
The name arrives in the fire the way a stone drops through water, falling through every layer, through the armor and the jaw and the wall and the contempt and the carefully maintained, exhaustingly polished surface of a woman who has not said her brother’s name with tenderness since she was fourteen years old and he was eighteen and he stood in the doorway with a duffel bag and said he was leaving and she said nothing, nothing, nothing, because saying something would have been asking him to stay, and asking was vulnerability, and vulnerability was the thing the god of the house had taught her to avoid at any cost, and the cost was Daniel, and the cost was the silence, and the silence was twelve years long.
Daniel is in the fire. Daniel is in the glory. Daniel is standing in the same presence I am standing in, the same Throne, the same white, the same looking-at, the same love, and the love is not fire for Daniel. The love is home. Daniel is home in the way that a man who has carried a weight his whole life is home when the weight is finally lifted, and I can see, not with the eyes but with the knowing that the fire permits, the knowing that is the fire, that the weight was lifted a long time ago, an eternity ago, at the Threshold, at the dying, when Daniel met the One he had spent his life dreading and discovered that the One was not the god of the house and the One had already carried his verdict and the carrying was the cross and the cross was the freedom.
Daniel is free. Daniel has been free since the moment I was building my wall, since the moment the grey began for me, since the moment I set my jaw and said never and meant it. Daniel said yes at the door I sneered at. Daniel went through the door I barricaded. Daniel is standing in the fire that is glory, and the glory has the quality of a man finally breathing, finally standing without crouching, finally looking up without flinching, the dread gone, the guilt gone, the weight that sat on his shoulders since the day he left me in the house with the god of the house, gone.
And I hate him for it. The hate is the armor’s last language, the hate is the wall’s reflex, the hate is the twelve-year-old girl on the kitchen floor saying: He left. He left me. He left me with the ledger and the notebook and the careful, angular handwriting and the door that closed with the sound of a latch engaging, and he left, and the leaving was the first wound, and the first wound was the reason for the second wound, and the second wound was Colette, and Colette was the reason for the sorry I have never spoken, and the sorry is the reason for the wall, and the wall is the reason I am burning, and the burning is his fault, and the fault is the accusation, and the accusation is the armor, and the armor is the only thing I have.
Except that the hate is not real. The hate is the reflex. The hate is what the armor produces when the armor encounters something it cannot process, the way a broken machine produces sparks when it is fed a current it was not designed to carry. The current is the sight of Daniel in glory. The current is the sight of a brother free and whole and home while the sister stands in the fire. The current is too much for the hate circuit, and the sparks are the old accusation and the old wound and the old fury, and the sparks do not land, because the fire is already here, and the fire is already burning everything that is not true, and the hate is not true. The hate was never true. The hate was the thing the armor invented to cover the thing underneath the hate, which is the thing the armor was built to cover, which is the wanting.
I want what Daniel has. I want the glory. I want the breathing. I want the standing-without-crouching and the looking-up-without-flinching and the freedom from the weight and the dread and the guilt and the god of the house and the ledger and the notebook and the careful, angular handwriting. I want the home. I want the home the way the girl on the kitchen floor wanted the home when the god of the house was all she had and the home was a lie and the lie was the architecture and the architecture was the survival.
And the wanting is the crack. And the crack is the one the summons found. And the crack is widening.
The armor holds. The jaw holds. The crack widens.
Micah
The fire is an offer. I understand this now, standing in it, feeling it press against every surface of the restored body, every inch of the skin that came back when the grey broke and the resurrection began. The fire is not a sentence. The fire is not the verdict of a court. The fire is the open door of a house, and the house is on fire because the house is love, and the love is total, and the totality is what makes it fire to a man who will not walk in and glory to the men and women who did.
The offer is the same offer the nearness made in the grey, the same offer the warmth carried, the same offer the scarred presence pressed against my back through all the measureless waiting. The offer has not changed. The offer has never changed. The offer is: come in. Lay down the case. Open the arms. Let the grief be held by the One who grieved with you. The offer is the same. Only the intensity has changed. Only the proximity has changed. Only the distance has been eliminated, the grey stripped away, the buffer removed, so that the offer that was once a whisper at the edge of awareness is now a shout in the center of everything, and the shout is not hostile and the shout is not impatient and the shout is not the sound of a judge banging a gavel, the shout is the sound of a person calling a name, my name, the real name beneath the argument, the name that existed before I built the case and will exist after the case comes down.
Micah. Not Micah-the-accuser. Not Micah-the-prosecutor. Not Micah-who-folded-his-arms-and-said-no. Just Micah. The boy who loved his sister. The man who lost her. The grieving, brilliant, principled, wrong, beautiful man who carried her all the way here.
I can feel the offer the way I can feel the fire: in the skin, in the bones, in the restored hands that came back in the grey and caught my balance when I staggered and then folded themselves back into the position that has been my shape since the dying. The offer is in the hands. The offer is saying: open them. The offer is saying: let the manuscript go. Let the case go. Let the evidence go. Let June’s death be held by someone whose hands are larger than yours and whose grief for her is older than yours and whose answer to the question you have been asking is not an argument but a wound.
A wound. The scars. I feel them again, the thing I felt in the grey, the unreadable quality of the nearness that carried wounds, the grief that matched mine, the familiarity with suffering that I could not classify and could not file and could not reduce to a line in the margin of the case. The scars are here, in the fire, in the presence, in the Throne itself. The scars are part of the looking-at. The scars are part of the knowing. The One who sees me, the One whose face is the fire and whose fire is the love, carries wounds, and the wounds are not decorative and the wounds are not metaphorical and the wounds are not the healed-over, barely-visible traces of something that happened a long time ago and no longer hurts. The wounds are open. The wounds are present. The wounds have the quality of a suffering that is still being carried, a grief that is still being borne, a cost that was paid and has never been set down.
And the wounds are familiar. The wounds have the quality of the grief that matched mine, the quality I could not read in the grey. The wounds are the place where the answer lives, the answer to the question I asked at the end of the grey, the question that formed beneath the accusation, beneath the legal question, beneath the Why and the How could You and the You owe her: the question the arms have been hiding. Were You there?
The wounds say: I was there.
I am not ready to hear this. The arms tighten. The case holds. The fire presses. The offer stands. The wounds are open. And the question I am not ready to ask and not ready to hear the answer to presses against the inside of the arms the way June’s voice presses against the comma, the way the something-after presses against the is good, the way the truth presses against the argument when the argument has been holding the truth at bay for fourteen years and the truth, finally, is in the room.
I am not ready. The fire does not ask if I am ready. The fire waits.
Sloane
The fire sees everything and I cannot make it stop seeing.
In the grey, I could turn. In the grey, I could angle the wall between me and the nearness, could set the jaw and face a different direction, could maintain, with meticulous, exhausting effort, the illusion that the seeing was optional, that the looking-at was a phenomenon I could position myself against. The grey allowed corners. The grey allowed angles. The grey allowed the particular, desperate geometry of a woman who has spent her life calculating the exact position required to keep the vulnerable thing hidden and the seeing thing at bay.
There are no corners here. There are no angles. The fire is not coming from a direction. The fire is the direction. The fire is every direction. The fire is above and below and beside and within, and the within is the worst, the within is the part the armor was never designed for, because the armor was an external architecture, a wall between inside and outside, and the fire has made the distinction between inside and outside meaningless, the way a flood makes the distinction between wet and dry meaningless once the water rises high enough, and the water is high enough, and the water is the fire, and the fire is the seeing, and the seeing is inside me now.
The seeing is inside the wall. The seeing is inside the room. The seeing is inside the sealed, locked, bricked-up, barricaded chamber where the thing I did to Colette sits in its box, and the box is open, and the lid I have held shut for six years is transparent, and the transparent is the fire, because the fire makes everything transparent, the fire is transparency itself, the fire is the quality of being seen without obstruction, and there is no obstruction left, there is nothing between the eyes of the Throne and the thing in the box, and the thing in the box is the thing I have spent my life and my death hiding.
Colette on the back steps of her mother’s house. Colette at twenty, the same age as my cruelty. Colette talking about the sky, which she always talked about, because the sky was the thing she painted and the painting was the thing she loved and the loving was the thing that made her open, made her reachable, made her the kind of person who would sit on a step and tell a friend the worst thing that had ever happened to her because the friend was Sloane and Sloane was trusted and Sloane would hold the story the way the sky holds the light, without judgment, without keeping a ledger, without making an entry.
And Sloane held the story. And Sloane used the story. Sloane took the worst thing that had ever happened to Colette and used it as a blade, used it as a weapon, used it in the particular, surgical, devastatingly precise way that a woman who has been taught by a master of manipulation can use a vulnerability when the vulnerability has been offered freely and the offering makes it a gift and the gift makes the using a betrayal so deep it has no bottom, no edge, no name the language can attach to it that would be adequate.
The fire sees this. The fire sees Colette’s face when the using happened. The fire sees the stairs and the words and the box of paints Colette threw in the trash the next day because the painting was the open thing and the open thing was the thing Sloane had used and the using had poisoned the opening. The fire sees the trust and the breaking of the trust and the girl who broke it and the girl who was broken by it, and the fire does not look away.
The fire says come.
And the come is impossible because the come means come with this, means come carrying this, means come with the using and the betrayal and the stairs and the words and the box of paints and Colette’s face, and the carrying is the thing I cannot do because the thing is the reason I built the wall and the wall was built to prevent the carrying and the preventing was the vow and the vow was: I will never be open enough to carry what I did. I will seal it. I will lock it. I will brick it up behind every wall I can build and I will set my jaw and I will hold and I will never, never, never say the word that would require me to open the box and carry it into the light.
Sorry. The word is sorry. The word I have not said. The word the armor was built to make unnecessary. The word that sits behind every lock and every wall and every brick and every layer of the architecture, pressing now, pressing against the seal from inside, pressing with the force of the fire behind it, because the fire is inside the wall now, and the fire is inside the room, and the fire has found the sorry, and the fire is warming it, and the warming is the pressure, and the pressure is the come, and the come is the Throne, and the Throne is the love, and the love says: bring it. Bring the sorry. Bring the using. Bring Colette. I have seen all of it and I am still here and I am still saying come and the coming does not require you to be clean. The coming only requires you to come.
I hold. The jaw holds. The sorry presses. The fire waits.
Micah
There is a quality to the Throne that I have no word for, a quality that the argument cannot classify and the copy editor cannot annotate and the grieving man cannot file. The quality is patience. But not the patience of the grey, which was a patience born of distance, a patience that could afford to wait because the waiting was indefinite and the room was ample and the pursuing could be sustained at a low intensity for as long as the grey held and the grey held for an eternity. This patience is different. This patience has the quality of a last thing, a final thing, a patience that is offering with full knowledge that the offering is the last offering, not because the patience has run out but because the place for offering has reached its end, the way a pregnancy reaches its end not because the mother is impatient but because the child is ready and the waiting has fulfilled its purpose.
The Throne is the last room. The fire is the last offer. The seeing is the last seeing. And the last is not a threat and not a deadline wielded as a weapon and not the countdown of a bomb attached to a timer, the last is simply the nature of the place, the structure of the thing, the fact that the grey was temporary and the summons was the end of the temporary and the Throne is the permanent, the place where the offering reaches its fullest intensity and its fullest patience at the same moment, the fire at its hottest and the love at its deepest and the door at its widest, all at once, all now, all here.
I feel the lastness. I feel it the way the body feels altitude, the way the lungs register the thinning of the air at a great height, not as a thought but as a physical fact, a change in the medium, a difference in the quality of the breathing. The air here is the last air. The light here is the last light. The fire here is the last fire. Not because the love will end, because the love will not end, but because the place of encounter, the room where the refusing can stand before the offering and be asked, is reaching the limits of its own architecture, the way a courtroom reaches the limits of its proceedings when the evidence has been presented and the testimony has been heard and the jury has retired and the verdict is approaching.
The verdict. I came for a verdict. I came with arms folded and a case prepared and a charge to lay and an argument to make, and the courtroom is here, and the defendant is here, and the evidence is here, and the question is here, the question I have been carrying since April, the question that has been my whole life and my whole death: Why did You let her die?
And beneath the question, the other question, the one I found at the end of the grey, the one the argument has been hiding: Were You there?
And around the questions, around the case, around the courtroom and the fire and the Throne and the presence and the knowing: the glory. The others in glory. My housemates in glory. Reed, who managed everything and was stripped to nothing and found the One who needed nothing managed. Naomi, who knew exactly the god she rejected and discovered that the One who came was not that god. Quinn, who ran from everything and was finally caught by a love that did not chase her down but simply stood at the end of her running and waited.
All of them in the same fire. All of them receiving what I am refusing. All of them home.
The fire is glory for them. The fire is agony for me. The fire is the same.
The same love. The same presence. The same Throne, the same face, the same scarred, wounded, grieving, patient, inexhaustible looking-at. The difference is the arms. The difference is the case. The difference is the argument I have carried like a manuscript through the grey and the summons and the resurrection and into this place where the manuscript is legible and the pages are open and the Throne has read every word and the Throne has not argued back.
The Throne has not argued back. This is the thing I did not expect. This is the thing the courtroom analogy did not prepare me for, because in a courtroom the defendant speaks. In a courtroom the defense presents its case. In a courtroom there is a rebuttal, a counter-argument, a forensic dismantling of the prosecution’s evidence, a point-by-point, paragraph-by-paragraph, exhibit-by-exhibit refutation that the copy editor in me could assess and weigh and find wanting or sound. I expected a defense. I expected a theodicy. I expected the God I have been accusing for fourteen years to open His mouth and say: Here is why I let your sister die. Here is the plan. Here is the bigger picture. Here is the justification you have been demanding.
The mouth does not open. The defense does not come. The theodicy is not offered. The fire burns and the scars are visible and the Throne is white and the looking-at does not stop and the love does not stop and the offering does not stop, but the argument I came to demolish is not presented, and the absence of the argument is the thing I was least prepared for, the thing the arms have no posture for, the thing the case has no brief for.
How do you prosecute a defendant who will not defend? How do you cross-examine a witness who does not speak? How do you win a case against an opponent who will not contest it, who simply stands there, who simply looks at you with a grief that matches yours and scars that you cannot explain away and a love that does not argue and does not justify and does not apologize and does not excuse but simply remains, simply persists, simply holds its ground and its wounds and its face toward you with the patience of something that has been waiting for you to stop talking long enough to see what is in front of you?
The arms fold. The case holds. The fire presses. The argument shakes.
Sloane
The fire is not punishment. The fire is not the god of the house. The fire is not the ledger, not the notebook, not the careful, angular handwriting, not the door closing with the sound of a latch engaging, not the chair behind the desk, not the lamp that threw sharp shadows, not any of the thousand small instruments of surveillance and control that the father used and the daughter learned and the learning became the armor and the armor became the self.
The fire is the opposite of all of these. The fire is the thing that has no ledger, the thing that does not calculate, the thing that saw every page I ever wrote in the notebook of my cruelty and did not reach for a pen and did not make an entry and did not assign a consequence and did not close the door with the sound of a latch engaging. The fire saw everything and stayed. The fire saw Colette and stayed. The fire saw the stairs and the words and the using and the box of paints and the trust that was given and the trust that was broken, and the fire stayed.
And the staying is the fire. I understand this now, in the full, unveiled, totally immediate presence of the Throne, in the place where the grey’s mercy of distance has been removed and the nearness is no longer at the edge but at the center and the center is everywhere. The staying is the fire. The love that stays when it has seen everything, that refuses to leave when it has been shown the worst, that persists in its come when the come has been met with silence and contempt and the set jaw and the held wall for an eternity, is fire. Not because the love is angry. Not because the love is punishing. But because the love, experienced by a woman who will not receive it, is agony. The love, pressed against an armor that will not open, is heat. The love, shining into a room whose occupant will not come out, is a burning, and the burning is not the love’s cruelty but the armor’s friction, the wall’s resistance, the jaw’s refusal to unclench, generating heat the way a brake pad generates heat when it is pressed against a wheel that is still turning.
The wheel is still turning. The love is still turning. The come is still coming. And the brake is the armor, and the armor is the self, and the self is Sloane, and Sloane is burning, and the burning is not the love’s fault.
The burning is mine.
I know this. The knowing is the fire’s gift, the fire’s terrible, unwanted, unbearable gift: the knowledge that the agony is not being inflicted from outside but is being generated from inside, the knowledge that the wall is the source of the heat and the armor is the source of the burning and the jaw is the source of the friction and the vow is the source of the pain. The knowledge that if the wall came down and the armor came off and the jaw unclenched and the vow released, the fire would not stop. The fire would not diminish. The fire would become what it is for Daniel, what it is for the others, what it has been for the reconciled since the moment they said yes: glory. Warmth. Home.
The fire would become the thing I want and cannot have because having it would require the opening, and the opening would require the sorry, and the sorry would require the carrying of Colette into the light, and the carrying is the thing the girl on the kitchen floor swore she would never do, because carrying is vulnerability and vulnerability is the thing that gets you hurt and the getting-hurt is the thing the armor exists to prevent.
Except. Except that the armor is what is hurting me now. The armor is the source of the fire. The armor, which was built to prevent pain, is the thing producing pain, because the armor is pressed against a love that will not stop, and the pressing is the friction, and the friction is the burning, and the burning is the agony, and the agony is the direct, unavoidable, architecturally inevitable consequence of building a wall against a love that has no edges and refusing to take the wall down.
The wall is hurting me. The god of the house is not hurting me. The god of the house is not here. The god of the house was never here. The god of the house was a man in a chair with a pen and a notebook, and the man is dead, and the chair is empty, and the notebook is closed, and the pen has no ink, and the Throne is not the chair and the Throne is not the study and the fire is not the ledger and the love is not the surveillance, and the knowing, the terrible, clarifying, furnace-hot knowing that the fire provides, is that the wall I built to survive the god of the house is now the thing preventing me from surviving the god who has no house, the god whose Throne is not a chair and whose book is not a ledger and whose seeing is not surveillance and whose come is not a command.
The wall is the wrong wall. The armor is the wrong armor. The defense is aimed at the wrong god.
And the right god, the real god, the god who is the fire and the fire who is the love, is waiting. Waiting with the patience of the Throne, the patience that is last and final and not-a-threat, the patience that will not force and will not break in and will not seize the wall and tear it down, the patience that is simply standing at the door of the fortress and saying come out, come out, come out, and the come out is the offer and the offer is the fire and the fire is the love and the love is the thing the armor cannot survive.
The armor holds. The armor burns. The jaw holds. The jaw shakes. The crack widens.
The crack.
Micah
The Throne does not answer, and the not-answering is the answer, and the answer is not the kind of answer I prepared for.
I prepared for an argument. I prepared for a defense. I prepared for the kind of answer a defendant gives when confronted with a charge, the kind of structured, point-by-point, evidence-based response that the copy editor in me could weigh and assess and find wanting. I prepared for Here is why. I prepared for Here is the plan. I prepared for Here is the reason I stood at a distance while a twelve-year-old girl who loved beetles and held her pencil wrong died in a hospital bed that was too wide for her body.
The Throne offers none of this. The Throne offers its face. The Throne offers its fire. The Throne offers its knowing, its complete, devastating, uninventable knowing of who I am and what I carry and why I carry it and what it has cost me and what it has cost the girl whose death I built my case on. And in the knowing, in the fire, in the face: the wounds. The scars. The visible, present, un-healed-over evidence of a suffering that I cannot account for in my case, because my case assumes distance, my case assumes a defendant who stood off from the suffering and let it happen from a safe remove, and the scars do not say safe remove.
The scars say something else. The scars have been saying something else since the grey, since the first time I felt the nearness carrying its wounded quality, the grief that matched mine, the familiarity with suffering that did not have the texture of observation but had the texture of participation. The scars have been saying: I was not at a distance. I was not watching from a safe remove. I was in it.
I am not ready to hear what the scars are saying. The arms tighten. The argument deploys its last resources: Scars do not answer the charge. Scars do not explain the purpose. Scars do not justify the permission of suffering. A God who suffers alongside the sufferer has still permitted the suffering, and the permitting is the crime, and the crime requires a verdict, not a display of wounds.
But the argument is shaking. The argument is shaking because the argument was built for a different defendant, a defendant who stood at a distance, a defendant who permitted suffering from the safety of omnipotence, a defendant whose hands were clean. And the hands of the One before me are not clean. The hands of the One before me are scarred. And the scars change the shape of the question, and the changed question is a question the argument has no brief for, and the no-brief is the shaking, and the shaking is the first real threat the arms have felt since the dying.
The question is changing. The question is no longer Why did You let her die? The question is becoming Were You with her when she died? and the becoming is the thing I cannot stop and cannot control and cannot manage and cannot file and cannot annotate and cannot mark in the margin with a neat, precise note that says: Error. Inconsistency. Does not follow from the stated premises.
Because it does follow. From the scars. From the wounds. From the grief that matched mine. From the nearness that carried the quality of one who has suffered. It follows, and the following is the fire, and the fire is the answer I did not ask for, and the answer is approaching, and the approaching is the Throne, and the Throne waits.
And I stand in the fire with my arms folded and my case intact and my argument shaking and the question changing and June’s voice saying, as it has always said, from the hospital bed, from the comma, from the place between I think the something-after and the last word she spoke to me in the living world: good.
Good.
The fire presses. The Throne waits. The arms hold. The question changes.
I am not ready. But the not-ready does not matter, because the Throne is not asking for ready. The Throne is asking for the arms. The Throne is asking for the opening. The Throne is asking, with the patience of a last thing and the heat of a first thing and the scars of a finished thing, for the one motion the argument has been preventing since April, since the hospital room, since the ceiling stayed empty and the prayer went unanswered: the unclenching. The laying-down. The simple, terrible, devastating act of opening the hands and letting the case fall and standing, for the first time in fourteen years, with nothing between me and the face.
I am not ready.
The face says: I know.
Sloane
The fire does not recoil, and the not-recoiling is the fire, and the fire is the love, and the love is the Throne, and the Throne is the face, and the face is the last face, the face at the end of all the hiding and all the running and all the building and all the sealing and all the bricking-up and all the jaw-setting and all the contempt-producing and all the sorry-withholding, the face at the end of all of Sloane.
And the face is not the god of the house. And the face is not the father in the chair. And the face is not the ledger-keeper or the notebook-writer or the careful, angular administrator of a household where love was conditional and conditions were catalogued and catalogues were weapons and weapons were the only language the family spoke.
And the face is not turning away.
I have been waiting for the face to turn away. I have been waiting, through the grey and the summons and the resurrection and the approach and the fire, for the moment when the seeing becomes too much and the love reaches its limit and the patience exhausts itself and the face, having seen Colette and the stairs and the words and the using and the box of paints and the trust broken and the sorry withheld, turns away, turns aside, turns the gaze somewhere else, gives me the rejection I have been bracing for and expecting and, in some terrible, hidden, unfaceable place, wanting, because rejection would validate the armor, rejection would prove the vow correct, rejection would confirm what the girl on the kitchen floor decided at twelve: that the world is made of ledgers, and the ledgers keep track, and the tracking produces verdicts, and the verdicts produce distance, and the distance is safety, and the safety is the only thing worth having.
The face does not turn away. The face does not give me the rejection. The face stays. The face looks. The face sees everything the fire shows it, every layer the fire peels back, every brick the fire dissolves, every wall the fire makes transparent, and the face does not change its expression, and the expression is not judgment and not condemnation and not the careful, angular assessment of a man calculating a punishment. The expression is the come. The expression is the offer. The expression is the love that has been pressing against the armor since the dying and is pressing now with the full, un-mediated, un-greyed, un-buffered force of the Throne, and the pressing is not coercion and not breaking-in and not seizure, the pressing is presence, the pressing is the simple, devastating fact of a love that will not leave.
The love will not leave. I have tried everything. I have set the jaw. I have held the wall. I have produced the contempt. I have maintained the armor. I have watched the others soften and despised them for it. I have watched Quinn stop running and Naomi stop fighting and Reed stop managing and I have called each softening weakness and each yielding defeat, and the calling has been the armor’s language, the armor’s way of processing the incomprehensible fact that the love was winning, was softening, was reaching the ones who let it reach them, and the reaching was not defeat but freedom, and the freedom was not weakness but strength, and the strength was the thing the armor could not produce because the armor was designed for survival and survival is not the same thing as living and living is the thing the fire is offering, and the offering is the come, and the come is the face, and the face will not turn away.
Daniel found this. Daniel is in the glory. Daniel is free. Daniel is the proof that the face does not turn away, the evidence that the come does not run out, the testimony that the love is real and not a trap and not a trick and not the god of the house wearing a different mask. Daniel went through the door and the door did not close behind him and the room on the other side was not the study and the chair on the other side was not the leather chair and the face on the other side was not the careful, angular, surveillance face of the father. Daniel is free. Daniel is home.
And I am burning. Burning in the same fire that is Daniel’s glory. Burning because the armor will not come off and the wall will not come down and the jaw will not unclench and the sorry will not be spoken and the girl on the kitchen floor will not stand up, will not stand up, will not stand up.
But the fire says: stand up.
The fire says: stand up, child. The floor is not your home. The linoleum is not your country. The cold pajamas are not your armor. The dry eyes are not your strength. Stand up. The god of the house is gone. The ledger is closed. The notebook is shut. The pen has no ink. The chair is empty. The door is open and the opening is not a trap and the trap was never my design and the design was always this: that you would come out and stand up and open your hands and bring the sorry and bring Colette and bring the using and bring the stairs and bring every terrible, beautiful, broken piece of you into the fire, and the fire would not consume you, and the fire would not condemn you, and the fire would not make an entry in a ledger, because I have no ledger, and the fire would hold you, the way I have been holding you since the grey, since the dying, since the kitchen floor, since the first night the god of the house closed the door with the sound of a latch engaging and you learned that love was conditional and you decided, with the absolute, irrevocable, total commitment of a twelve-year-old child in cold pajamas on a cold floor, that you would never be vulnerable again.
The fire says: be vulnerable again.
The armor holds. The fire waits. The crack widens. The sorry presses. Daniel shines. The jaw shakes.
I hold. The Throne holds. The holding is meeting. And the meeting is the fire. And the fire is the love. And the love is the last offer. And the offer is open.
Micah
I stand in the fire of the Throne and the fire is the love and the love is the agony and the agony is the difference between my arms and the open hands of the reconciled around me, and the difference is the case, and the case is shaking, and the shaking is the scars.
The scars. The scars. I cannot stop seeing the scars. They are in the fire. They are in the face. They are in the looking-at that knows me and sees me and holds me in its knowing with the patience of a last thing and the intensity of a first thing and the wounds of a thing that has already happened, a thing that the Throne does not explain and does not argue and does not present as evidence for the defense, a thing that simply is, the way June’s death simply is, the way my grief simply is, the way the April and the Tuesday and the ceiling and the prayer and the stopping of the breath simply are, facts that do not negotiate, truths that do not argue, realities that sit at the bottom of everything and cannot be moved by any amount of rhetoric.
The scars are a fact. The wounds are a truth. The suffering of the One before me is a reality that sits at the bottom of my case and shifts the ground beneath it, and the shifting is the shaking, and the shaking is the fire.
I came to try a defendant who stood at a distance. I am standing before a defendant who did not.
The arms hold. But the arms are tired. The muscles in the restored body ache with the holding, ache with the clenching, ache with the fourteen years of a posture that was never a resting position but was always a labor, a sustained effort, a continuous expenditure of energy to keep the grief compressed into an argument and the argument compressed into a charge and the charge aimed at a target that, I am beginning to see, is not where I aimed it.
I aimed at the absent God. I am standing before the wounded God. And the wound changes the aim, and the changed aim is the question changing, and the question changing is the arms loosening, and the loosening is not surrender, not yet, not here, but the loosening is the first motion that is not the tightening, the first movement that is not the folding, the first thing the arms have done since the dying that is not the holding of the case.
The question is: Were You there?
The scars say: I was there.
And the saying is the fire. And the fire is the love. And the love is the offer. And the offer is open.
And the case, the case I carried from April to the grey to the summons to the Throne, the case that has been my life and my identity and my folded arms and my brilliant, beautiful, fatally flawed argument, is about to be answered. Not here. Not yet. But the answer is coming, and the answer is not an argument, and the answer is in the scars, and the scars are in the face, and the face is in the fire.
I hold. The Throne holds. The fire presses. The scars wait.
And somewhere in the waiting, in the fire, in the place where the question is changing and the arms are loosening and June’s voice is pressing against the comma with the force of a truth that will not be held back forever: the good approaches. The something-after. The thing she said was good. The thing I would not believe. The thing the fire is showing me, the Throne is offering me, the scars are telling me, in a language that is not an argument and cannot be met with an argument and must be met with something else, something the arms do not know how to do, something the hands might know if the arms would let them.
If the arms would let them.
Sloane
I hold. The Throne holds. The fire burns. The armor burns. The wall burns. The jaw holds. The crack widens. The sorry presses. Daniel is in the glory. The five are in the glory. The Throne is the face. The face is the love. The love is the fire. The fire is the offer. The offer is open.
And I am burning. Sloane, twenty-six, daughter of a ledger, keeper of a vow, holder of a wall, builder of an armor, sister of a man in glory, carrier of a sorry she has never spoken, breaker of a trust she has never repaired, wrecker of a girl she has never faced, burner in a fire that is the love of a god who has no ledger and whose Throne is not a chair and whose book is not a notebook and whose face does not recoil.
Burning.
And the burning is the offer. And the offer is open. And the open is the come. And the come is the face. And the face is the fire. And the fire is the love.
And the love has no border. And the border is the wall. And the wall is mine. And the mine is the choice. And the choice is the fire or the glory, and the fire and the glory are the same, are the same, are the same love, and the difference is the arms, and the difference is the armor, and the difference is the sorry, and the difference is the opening, and the opening is the thing I cannot do and the thing the fire waits for and the thing the Throne offers and the thing Daniel found and the thing the five found and the thing every soul who has stood in this fire and felt it turn from burning to warmth and from agony to glory has done: the opening. The simple, devastating, apocalyptic act of opening the hands and saying yes and meaning it and letting the love in.
I have not opened. I have not said yes. I have not let the love in.
But the fire waits. And the Throne waits. And the face does not turn away. And the love does not stop. And the come does not cease. And the offer remains open. And the sorry presses against the seal from inside with a force that is the fire itself, the fire that has gotten inside the wall, inside the room, inside the fortress, inside the tomb, and the force is not violent and not coercive and not the god of the house demanding compliance, the force is the sorry itself wanting to be free, the sorry that has been imprisoned for six years in a vault Sloane built to keep it from reaching the light, and the light is here, and the light is the fire, and the fire is the love, and the love is the Throne, and the Throne is the face, and the face is saying come, and the come is the last come, the come at the end of all the comes, the come that has been spoken since the dying and through the grey and into the summons and across the resurrection and into the fire, the come that has been refused and refused and refused, and is being spoken still.
Still.
I hold. The come holds. The fire holds. The Throne holds. And the holding is about to break, or the holding is about to be met, or the holding and the meeting are the same thing, and the same thing is the fire, and the fire is the love, and the love is the offer, and the offer is open, open, open, and the open is the door, and the door is the face, and the face does not turn away.
The face does not turn away.