Greenville (Reprise)
You asked me about God in the time of harvest. You asked me if God were a construct to prove in relief. This is the delta; this is the stony back of Him. This is what we were never given. These fields, the white of them. We gasped for air in the landscape. What could you know of cotton? What could you know of the blood? I love you. I need you to know the blood-soaked earth of which I am made. How it feels to fear the earth itself, for the earth to be a god itself, and the river that can give or take it all back again for any reason she decides. I told you about the flood. I told you how we gathered all we had on our backs and carried ourselves to the levee, how the boats came for us and turned their backs too and left us to rot for 78 days, which (coincidentally) is the same number of days I am told I lived and died and lived and died and remained here on earth by will alone. Will and love. Once, I said, I was whole and free of grief. You took my hand. You asked how one can survive this, and I said: what do I know of survival as I blew apart into mist and the river rose up for you: a blessing, a drowning, a baptism.