Atum Speaks, Apep Answers
I. Atum Speaks of the Serpent who Dwells in his Unfinished Mouth, Yet Refuses to Acknowledge him Directly
I drag dawn up by the throat each morning,
my palms blistering on the rope of light,
as he tugs me back into the throat of night—
his scales scraping sparks off the dark, flint against vein.
I made the world by retching myself open,
but he waits in the split I never stitched shut,
licking the seam with a tongue tasting of rust and riverbed.
He knows every chamber where my breath hides.
I try to swallow him whole each dusk,
to choke him down with the sun’s molten yolk,
but he rises again in the reflux of my making—
a flood divinity alone cannot contain.
So he writhes deeper, drinking the heat I spill,
while I keep swallowing the night he cannot stop remaking.
II. Apep Answers from the Darkness That Opens Inside the God Who Pretends Not to Hear Him
and you keep swallowing the night i cannot stop remaking
your breath shreds against my scales Atum—the soft light
you hoard i take in spite in mouthfuls dragging the dawn back down
your throat to savor its embering taste i sharpen my laugh
on your trembling spine my coils learning each notch
as a corridor to slip deeper—i rise when you try to rise
i strike when you reach for the sky chewing the sun
from your grasp hearing you gasp into the hollow i keep
open between us i slither the length of your shadow
to unmake the shape you guard—i unspool your name
with my teeth tasting the dark marrow you hide beneath it
i drink the river you sweat through fear i drink the fire
you spit for comfort i drink the ache you call creation—break me see
how gladly i splinter your light into the silence i will swallow next
Apep After the Cutting
and when they cut me open again
i do not scream—i simmer
spread thin across the floor of the sky
like something left to reduce in a cracked pot
the pieces of me hissing back into shape
as if steam could remember bone
they slice i thicken
they burn i sweeten
they scatter i gather myself
from the char of their certainty
i have been chopped into prayers
into warnings
into the kind of story children whisper
so they can pretend fear is a choice
and every time i come back
i taste more like what they season me with
hatred crushed fine
order ground coarse
their belief stirred in
until i swallow it without chewing
call me monster
and i become broth-dark
call me chaos
and the word curls into my veins
like ivy twisting a ruined gate
poison finding its purpose
in the place it was told to grow
i never meant to be a god of unmaking—
but when the world repeats it enough
you start hearing your name
in the scrape of the knives
you start believing the recipe
they wrote on your skin
who am i to argue with a universe
that has already decided my flavor?
who am i to insist on innocence
when the moment i rise
their hands reach for the blade?
so i let them cut
i let them cook
i let them call me what terrifies them
and then i gather the heat
the way ivy gathers ruins
slow
patient
green with inevitability
i rise again
stitched by the pressure of their fear
boiling back into the serpent they require—
the one they swear i’ve always been
the one i become
each time they taste the dark
and pretend it isn’t familiar
i regenerate
not because i want to
but because someone must answer
to the name they keep sharpening
and tonight
as every night
it’s me.
