A Writer's Prayer

I sing to you, oh muse. I cut out my tongue and put it on a silver plate where it rolls happily. Will you take it? Or do you want more?

Take my eyes, then. I can’t look on you anyway, not in the face, and if I can’t look on truth then what good is my sight? If I look I know I’ll die, for what is god but the truth of a thousand little choices?

And you are my god, muse. The god of the Old Testament. Of fire and wrath and gaping earth. So hungry to punish. Take the skin on my back. Write your new commandments on my bones

Thou shall sing to me.

Thou shall sacrifice your offspring to me.

Thou shall love like the brief sunset behind a mountain.

Thou shall live.

And live. And live. Live like this body is nothing but a train stop. Live like my breast is cut open and all can see my beating heart. Live like the dreams you dream — terrifying with their attics and basements and the stairs. The stairs to heaven or hell, I can’t tell the difference.

Oh, muse, take this offering of ink and saffron and the very first girl I kissed. I’ve already given my body, now take the memories, so many like an entire drowned anthill. Take them away, please, and I’ll find a new patch of earth under a tree to lie in. And Live there where roots will wrap around my brain, and I can hear the fungi singing too.

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*artwork The Kiss of the Muse by Paul Cézanne