The Mark of the Makers

~for the Degenerate Elite’s beautiful children;
for those who are and were

Destined for bodies
not aligned with their spirits, they looked
at each other with a sparkle in their
vision — a sparkle that would be (unknown

to them) beaten out of them; reviled all around
them; a sparkle that would die the moment they
emerged into a world, one destined to reject their
corporal dissonance. The spirits decided then

and there, to trade destinations: decided to go
where the other was destined, designed. They decided to
live a life they were not meant to live by design, in
bodies matching their sempiternal

being-ness. In other words, and that is to say,
they decided to thwart — deceive — The Designer,
Intelligent though it may be. But the All-Knowing
Creator saw their desire to design, decided their hubris

was a deception. The Designer, their Maker,
appeared before them and inside them, for
he is they is she is All
and they were told:

upon arrival into that place,
they would get their chance
to trade forms and face and
weeping with relief, they were

then embraced; loving arms before
they whooshed into being — in a
cold, white-and-steel room, gasping for
breath in foreign atmosphere, already

toxic. Their shrieks came unbidden, but
both did not know their cries were tiny remnants
of that promise; a shredding of it, from their home,
immortal. Then everything became

clear, so clear, to each,
as different voices, (one, deep and resonant;
the other, lilting and
pleasant) declared:

Congratulations —
it’s a boy
Congratulations —
it’s a girl

Contained in tiny, shivering forms,
both screamed with a shriveling certainty,
and sudden isolation, knowing they were each
lost to the other. All they could hear was

shrieks within ears emerging from distant mouths,
a shared, preternatural past
fades into faint familiarity — the new quivering
flesh, prisons of need and cold — they become drunk

on bellies-full. Instinctual nuzzling
at warm breasts. Shrinking down to size
inside foreign inner-landscapes; memories
of an embrace fade, and in their stead, a terror-violence
within each soul — a shuddering — the bitter irony.

It comes in waves.

The brutal knowledge,
that it was they — in the end
and from the
beginning —

who were
deceived.

~J.A. Carter-Winward