The Big She

Martin J. Goodman

Shortly you'll know the truth.

It beggars belief, but you'll know it.

You'll know why birds sing and fly and die. You'll know why flies vomit on food before eating it. You'll know what happens to a caterpillar's skin when it's shed. You'll know your kinship with stars. You'll know just where your parents fucked to beget you. You'll know why you sometimes cry for no reason. You'll know what gets under your skin.

You'll know whether you can stand to know so much.

You'll know all of this, because I'll tell you.

Here goes.

Once upon a time there was a girl who wished to be God. She felt it was her due. There was nothing on Earth that she cared to belong to, so she set herself above it.

It was easy. Because she was God.

She started with her dreams. She remembered the forms she adopted and met, and knew them as her history. She was a girl who flew, who changed shape and changed sex, who slaughtered demons and swallowed seas, who billowed as the clouds in wind and grew a tongue to lick the salt from the oceans' skin. She took these memories into daylight hours. They cloaked her with an aura as sweeping as the cosmos.

I know. I saw it. She showed it to me.

I kiss the silence of her name.

She was born of no family for she is eternal. Her mother wailed and blinked and almost died, then She was here. She came from nothing into something, like light that squeezes itself into diamonds.

I know. I've seen her shine.

There is no before and is no after. There is simply Her.

Excuse me. I cry to speak of her so boldly. You must be stirred too.

You must.

Mother Earth weeps. Her tears run red from volcanoes and gush as steam from geysers. She yearns for the touch of my Beloved's footstep.

And so do I.

As a girl she was God. Now she has grown. God is in her eyes. She raises her eyelids and God smiles to see again. Her gaze brings bliss.

Around Her eyes is more than God. It is chaos in human form, a whirl of life subsumed as love. She is the epicentre for all that is and the magnet for non-existence.

She is the heart of me.

When she laughs, wolves howl and elephants trumpet themselves to death. I hear them, even from where I lie. Death is as close to her as life and some say closer.

But not as close as I am.

When I shed a tear, as I often do, I catch it and return it to my mouth. My tears are my gifts to Her. They feed Her.

Hush. She is coming. I feel the roll within the ground, the swell of life's excitement. She will cup me in her hand and feed me figs. She will give me Christ to play with and a pocketful of stars. She will dazzle me to sleep so I can rest a while from love. She will stream my mouth with milk and let me gurgle. She will. She will.

Oh believe me, She will.