Never been religious. Or had time for a hope that comes without fire.
But before we worded them, we had ideas. Before the scripture of ancient men or the academia of modern ones grew an elegant forest, there was a feeling. A ghost of the thing that animates the human machine, and stalks between the trees in the deep places. The dark-made-fluid places.
The words were important. Are important. But they are political, clumsy, and in their nature oppressive. They hide the cartridges in the still lakes of tears and keep the colossal, silent stars burning a hundred years behind dark leaves. But even as words deflect in their crimes, they deflect from the thing. They cannot but point to the feeling of the animal. Its wet, angry paws, and its bright, bright eyes.
And when, at last, you learn to read the silence instead, you’ll find it close enough to touch.