Quiet, please, for the sexton beetles, who lower into the earth, slowly, the remains of the little ones: field mice, shrews, sparrows. An embalming of sorts takes place: an antibacterial cocktail of enzymes preserving the flesh, protecting the next generation of undertakers. Look – between rush hours, upon the public works of crows, lifting, piecemeal, the body, broken, of those for whom the way has been made difficult by the road: porcupine, skunk, white-tailed deer. I wonder, for Simon the North African pilgrim — the unbearable heft of emptiness after the cross had been carried, after the militia took it from his hands as freely as they commanded that he take it — That night, reclining, with little between body and soil, it may have been that bread tasted like ashes to Simon, that his father bade him eat, pressed a date into his palm. Rain, if it fell that night, would have carved with patience through sandstone, mud-brick. And if not rain, the wind — carrying in its manifold arms — as we all may, for each other, one day, with unheroic footfall and clumsy tenderness — the weight of something heavier, larger than ourselves.
Ophelia Hu Kinney is the child of Chinese immigrants. She is a mother, sister, and wife who lives on the land of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Her writing treads the rabbit trails of spirituality, ecology, queer and Asian American perspectives, and the practice of awe. Ophelia’s writing has appeared in The Common, The Christian Century (forthcoming), Geez Magazine, Inheritance Magazine, Unbound Justice, Our Bible App, and at Discipleship Ministries (UMC), to name a few. She was the winner of the NYC Midnight 2020 Micro Fiction Contest.
At The BTS Center, she gets to tell the stories of people becoming more human in a more-than-human world.
Wordless….. your words said it all…
This is beautiful! Thank you 🙏🏻