and then God is not like the sound the kindling makes as it meets the matchhead, not like the buoy in the bay invisible at night, not like the gravity calling to the pear on the bough above the field, nor the beam from which the boy you knew roped a knot around his neck to yoke this life to the next if there is a next and if not then to— nothingness. God is not like nothingness.

If God transcends all, then God transcends language. If God transcends language, we cannot deploy language to particularize God. If we cannot articulate what God is, we can only announce what God is not. This is how I approach the divine; I study the corona that circles the eclipse, which I’ve been told not to look at, still there’s some elegance in the bright

blur of pain behind my eyes. And so, unable to see the center, I trace the edges; I outline the mystery’s border; like making chalk silhouettes of the body at a murder investigation—a technique no detective actually uses as it contaminates the evidence. God is not the evidence. Not the residue, the shell casings, the blood pattern, or the partial fingerprint. Not the container or the object emptied. I’m not saying God is the negation. I’m saying the crime scene has been compromised. I’m the one who compromised it.