A man in the back pew let out a cry. It sounded closer to the depths of Jonah as the kids screamed and kicked. The body of the place shifted in unison as his son jammed a fat tiny pointer finger into the soft of his baby blue eyes. The women, children, even the young men stood in horror. Josiah was a strong man, a man with four kids, a wife and land, small land but simple land. And his woman—who had blue eyes too, attended the garden and the home and everyday–wore white. In horror they watched Josiah.
They say trees fall gracefully. Usually, there is a crack, and then a stillness that comes swiftly as limbs and leaves brushstroke over the earth. As the congregation stood back they watched their vileness. They heard the sound of wet branches twist and jelled out joints snap and howl. Stumbling back, they hissed how can Josiah forget us? How could he do such a thing? His thick beard, that cut the liquid stone of their body, looked to them now like a scorched forest. His frame that stood above them became hunched and pruned and one by one they began to spit on him and the women stopped envying his image. As the repulsion riffled through the barren walls, they didn’t hear the crack, nor the grace of bugs that water-falled into the air like she did. She watched his canopy bellow and crash into the earth. It made love with the stillness and the end. He was beautiful to her. Like a season. Like death. And she was his eternal green earth.