Wrath, wrath

I need a body. There always has to be a body. A lamb, a son, a first-born, a wide-eyed stupid thing with its lovely hands and open mouth, its tender, blinking obedience. I feel like you now, Father, I need a body to pay for every single way I’ve been wronged, offended, and fooled. Something meaty I can cast my wrath onto, flesh I can wring dry of blood and life. Let the punishment eclipse the crime. Let it be excruciating.

Sometimes, hunger sharpens the senses. But this kind—a hunger with no mouth that will chew itself raw—does not make you keener. It makes you mean. It lures out cruelty, that dragon with red-hot skin from a cave more ancient than anger or grief or sorrow, older than your Adam’s Adam. Better to reign in hell—it’s wrath that no longer wants to be understood, it wants to be felt. I want to know if it hurts.

That body, that believer, frater meus on his knees, begging, shaking, I never wanted to be like him, I wanted to BE him. BRUTUS! BRUTUS! BRUTUS! the town cheers as my …