hello.
i am the
angel
preparing you
to meet god.
few of you understand
exactly what we do- but you are
close in your guesses.
there is a plan, but it's not
exactly fate.
here in the
birthing and ending department,
we very rarely know his orders more than a
few years in advance.
sometimes we forget paperwork, miss memos,
make mistakes. take the wrong ones.
(you didn't expect that from angels, did you?)
please,
understand-
i'd say that "we're all human,"
but that doesn't quite apply, i suppose.
II.
i execute
the plan.
i've walked among people
on tiptoe, hoping not to disturb.
sometimes my assignments are
small.
as she bounded with her arms across
the monkey bars and swung around with her knees
that let her shirt fall down around her chin
revealing the startling sameness of children's chests
i planted the small knot of tumor like a seed
in her brain that would slowly begin to
chew at her body
and bring her back.
III.
sometimes in this line of work
i get distracted by the
soft humming of all the heartbeats in your world-
all the foreign sights and sounds. lampposts. patched asphalt. glass.
sometimes as i glide unbreathing through the air
i cause the scattering of birds or
your kite string to break-
sometimes in the act itself i am caught
in your photographs-
nothing in them but a
faint and hazy orb of light.