Unveiling

I read Louise Gluck's Averno and decided that I, too, wanted to be introspective.
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There would have been a time when he didn’t exist
and all there would have been of him would be labeled ‘possibility’
and placed in a jar on a shelf—
though labeling, in essence, denotes existence.

would have been a little blank space
floating in a wispy pink cloud
and ready to be filled with matter and ideas

and like other small blank spaces,
would have waited
until a figure in a long white coat
held a needle and said to himself as a notation,

“Stand ready to inject the possibilities with
reality: an egg is meeting with sperm in Sector 3972.”
Then a blinding light would flash and little reality cells
would form.

and when the birth light flashed, white hot pain would run over
the cells and last forever until finished.
and the cells would hold all the emotion in time
but would know at first only love.

and angels would sing over the use of a soul
and would ready their weapons to protect its innocence
while demons gnashed their teeth and tore skin and bone
anticipating the time
when the soul would choose.

The figure in the coat would watch the glowing
reality cells form a baby
and when he took off his coat after the birth,

He was the beginning and the end, and in the throbbing
silence of the light, he was all the possibilities of love.