Night Ritual In Which I Pay All I Owe

God lives in  smoke and burning incense. Tonight I bend into water to become flowers-

magnolia with blood petals. They say life begins in water so I have to pay my debt to it. 

Blood of goat is divine to the body, It is a cleansing that makes us a tidy room, a white 

bird that dives into the star. I take in the fragrance of burning herbs that comes as angel 

to my nose and I become stiff and slithery like a fish. A razor deeps its teeth on my body to 

demarcate devil and God in a way that there's a fence between me and darkness. I toddle in 

anointing, my soul in total possession of fire and hymns that rattle out of a shackle full of 

cowries. I believe this is baptism, I touch God in this ritual and become snow.