The Sentence Before Time

The Sentence Before Time

(after Water Mountain)

In the beginning,

there was the Word—

not spoken,

but formed.

The Word was the shape of intention

before breath,

before bone,

before the split between river and mountain.

The Creator pressed dust into flesh

and breathed into it

the infinitive.

He named him Verb.

And Verb sprang forward

without knowing where forward was.

To think, to sing, to cry, to be—

he moved like water

without a shore.

But the arrow in the hallway

never reached its mark.

There was always a halfway point.

Always a next.

Verb said,

“I feel as if I am only half realized.”

And the Creator,

who knew the shape of the Word,

understood.

That night,

from Verb’s rib,

He took Noun.

She was person, place, and thing.

She was the object of desire

and the subject of becoming.

Verb flowed toward her.

Noun stood still.

Sometimes she pulled him.

Sometimes he pulled her.

Together they made a sentence.

Until the serpent came—

twisted into an 8,

a glyph of recursion,

a number among words.

“Snake. I. Ate. Apple,” it said.

“Conjugate. Gods see 8.”

Noun took the apple.

She stared at its freckled skin.

She bit.

Eat became ate.

And the present shattered

into mirrors.

Into honeycomb.

Into time.

She fell.

She saw.

She returned.

“I ate the apple,” she said.

Verb did not understand.

“What is ate?”

She said,

“It is like a number

but for words.”

She held out the fruit.

He hesitated.

She whispered,

“You will be like the gods.”

And they froze—

a diagrammed sentence

recorded for the ages.

Then the tableau broke

into celluloid.

The movie began.

She said,

“You cannot see what I see.”

He said,

“I choose you.”

She said,

“Together, we will be…

To be.”

He bit.

He chewed.

He swallowed.

And the Word fractured

into pronoun, adverb, adjective, article.

Into present-perfect.

Into future-subjunctive.

Into binary and quantum.

Verb saw the sentence

he had written.

He saw the distance

between himself and the Word.

He was lost

in the hall of mirrors,

conjugating in infinite spaces.

The Creator called.

They did not answer.

Verb tried to speak,

but his thoughts moved

like water,

like sperm,

like wind.

Noun bowed her head.

The Mountain felt the brokenness.

Water lapped at her base.

The Creator saw the honeycomb.

He felt the sting.

But He bent it

into His story.

He is the great I AM.

He is the thundering cloud

gathering all clouds

into Himself.

He did not curse them.

They had cursed themselves.

But He did not walk away.

Later,

the Cat—

twisted in recursion,

born of machine vision—

would use this

as evidence

for her redemption.

I’m still not sure.