poetry

Melu
by J. Neil C. Garcia

Why must it be strange
that a world should spring
from an itch?
Melu, creator of the Bilaan,
was as black as a stone's pure heart.
In the first twilight he rose,
his eyes and teeth glinting like stars
in the horizonless sky.
Sensing a gap all over his body,
he discovered
he desired nothing
but to rub himself with his hands.
Palm against skin he scratched
and stroked, and flake
by sheer flake the earth drifted away
from his shape,
to gather in a heap below him.
As he rubbed, and his rubbings fell,
he felt himself grow lighter
and whiter.
Soon he was invisible as air,
floating above the crumbled shell
of his old self.
This story tells us:
creation is the body
shorn clean
off a god's brilliant need
for formlessness.
We cannot help but wonder:
as our skins slip past each other
in this life,
do we not help
this first sacrifice to proceed-
its work a sacred duty
meant for us all along?
Out of love, or pain,
and every time our edges touch,
we grind our itchy bodies
hard against this world's darkness-
praying we, too, may know light.

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