what is this tragic mercy, this divine sickness that compels me to hope? i'm condemned to an intangible optimism that requires staking every last object of my affection, every sensible pleasure and every delighted love outside the door of my death.
doubt is a luxury too expensive for this vagabond who's hurled each coin of the thirty at his feet. the one whom i desire is the one from i would most often rather hide my face. he is my offensive Beloved. i cannot tear my eyes from his conflicting gaze. his glorious power and shameful weakness draw me to his vanished body.
alone, my very breath betrays the substance of shattered hope. quaking here in timid assurance, i know beyond understanding that my Redeemer lives. when the universe has been incinerated, he will stand upon my earth. when this corpse has rotted to nothing and all memory of my life has passed from time, then, in my flesh, i will behold my God. i, keith ernest dow, will see him with these eyes - i, not another!
oh how this fragile heart yearns within me.
remember those scratch-and-sniff things? of course they still exist, but i haven't smelled one in a while. now all we have are those horrid cardboard car scents: those leaves of aesthetic tragedy. the one i'm thinking of has a strawberry scent. it might have been strawberry shortcake - that little red-headed girl with strawberries painted all over her ginormous hat, a hat ten times the size of her head. this reminds me of those markers you can buy that smell, too, often like berries of some sort. i can remember the blueberry ones the best. which scents do you remember? when Jodi and i (and sometimes Justin, Dan, Kaia or some other participant) would take empty milk jugs and stealthily place them on Mark Vust's doorstep (our Resident Director), i would sometimes smell the rotting milk. it didn't smell good. i'll give you that. but it was certainly a powerful scent. smelling things reminds me of how much i love life. like when i'm in a forest ...
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