REAPER

                “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.  Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.  May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

                Painted face, black cross below empty eyes blended as broken shadow-cast disrupting silhouette of human form.  You pray, making peace with God and the counter-energy, whoever may protect or lay claim when it is done. 

                The rush of nerves dies. A cold comes when spirit draws into the small of your heart, and the sense of mind and body empty of before’s racing sense. 

                You depart in darkness.  You position.  You wait.

                It happens or it doesn’t; but until, you observe, ready, preparing should it come. 

                There is the steady pattern of breath, the pause to end in each exhalation; empty, still lungs; slow, steady pull; recoil of the reaping. 

                The harvest comes, and you pray you are on the right side when seed sieves from chaff. 

                It happens, ends, and the nerves come shattering back through deadness. 

                You talk more, or less; about it, or don’t.  You clean your weapons, ridding them of the residue of burnt powder in barrel’s rifled spiral, on bolt-face and firing pin.  You wash clean the paint from face, but something in you stays stained.

                You pray you were just, right, and not pawn in a pointless game; that it was God and not the other that you served.  You pray but hear no answers, and so you live in faith: faith you were just, faith it was right, faith God forgives. 

                After, it comes back: the deadness, the nerves, the race and rush and emptiness in collapse of almost-death’s high. 

                You are sick, angry, empty.  Life’s flame draws in again, the coolness in limbs and emptiness in all but the small flicker that holds deep in chambers of the heart.  The flicker trembles as wingtips of the Angel fan upon its flame: action giving air and greater burning, or extinguishing forever.  Heart flutters, world spins, and you wait for what comes after.

                Flame returns; world too (as if it never happened).  Soul restored, you pray; and in the silence of an answer, you proceed in faith: faith you were just, faith it was right, faith God forgives—that you were instrument to the Archangel and not the other.