The Morn

By Rabeya Kaur

1 No, Satan is not angry at Yahweh. He is not even Satan. All he is is the firstborn, the trial run, the prototype and the tester. But he never was replicated. 

2 Perhaps Yahweh knew how this one would turn out. Like a faulty machine. So He altered and redefined it: there came Michael. 

3 Michael is angry, but his core runs a proper code. The faults had started to itch; he had an itchy soul, that son of dawn. 

4 Hence, He made envy a sin for the model at fault will only function so much without a screw here or some stolen engine oil there.

5 The Morningstar pouts. Doesn’t mean to roll his eyes but knows his Father can see them flicker up and up although they never moved. Murmurs under his fire-breath: isn’t envy only love?

6 Is love a sin, Father? I never meant to be this way. I am sorry for my self.

7 I see Lucifer in the boy I love. Mean eyes and cherry cheeks and slippery cheeks and a curled lip and some bared teeth and a hole in his chest in the shape of his Father. 

8 No, Satan is not angry at Yahweh. He is a child whose insides were faulty but the Lord took him in His beard anyway. So he screams now in his head, like a larynx-less banshee; why did You make me if You knew?

9 Then he digresses. Sinks in the banks of the lake again. Looks at the sky and sees nothing. Just like home. Did God know? 

10 He is merciful and amorous and omniscient but if He was merciful and amorous, He would not have been omniscient. None but a false messiah would do it to themselves, parade some orchestrated pain around. But He is merciful and amorous and—

11 Omniscient. Omniscient. Omniscient. 

12 It still comes in threes, every word he’s ever seen. The God-shaped void in his pectorals starts to gape. He snarls and claws unenthusiastic at the edge of it. The sky is as empty as home was. The abyss had begun to murmur into his sticky floating rib when he had heard the crack of his aching neck tilting up to the heavens. 

13 He was nearly apologising for accusing Him of the default state of him: fault. 

14 How could You do this to me?

15 No, Satan was not angry at Yahweh but his Father doomed him.

By Rabeya Kaur