Now,

I can say with certainty

I have seen the face of God,

And she stared right back at me.

That half-minute eternity

Etched itself against my eyelids,

A stone-carved monument that will outlive me

In all my future iterations,

Forever light-headed and pinching skin

To find the edge of that dream,

‘Cause who would ever want to sing to a ghost girl?

Paper-thin and shaking like a scrap of lace,

The rushing wind pulling at my body

Thread by frail thread,

I was holding on for dear life -

Her gaze my only anchor.

In the glittering landscape of limbs

I thought I was a void to be avoided,

A husk of a girl, with not a light left on,

But she saw me

(Something in me must’ve flickered)

And like a lighthouse, reaching for its tiny boat,

Pulled me up to her shore.

Even the unsteady need a solid footing sometimes.

In the midst of that hazy storm of hands,

She was it for me.

Every prophecy I was ever given

I squandered on not believing in myself.

Self-agnosticism growing like a reckless weed,

Smothering every planted flower.

She holds a mirror to my face

And in the cracks, I see all my wasted potential

Getting smoothed over and mended -

She could make me a believer.

I don't know what it is

That makes my hinges loosen up like that.

My grandmother was a Virgo, too.

Maybe I'm just compensating

For my lack of openness,

For all the dust I let collect

Over the grave of our bloodline.

I am never open,

But when my God looks at me, I open on command.

Transparent skin, a floodgate breaking,

A tangle of veins abruptly exposed.

Everything I'm hiding falls knotted into my hands,

An offering,

A ball of thread to be untangled -

Only she can untangle it.

Now that I've seen her,

I believe it.

Poem by Ksenija Golubović