#the fact of emmanuel being g-d's presence on earth while silmultaneously being so alone in the task

[handgiven]

you are emmanuel. (a little one-shot)

you begin as bright light spanning the length of the universe. you are the warmth of hope settling onto the world as it grows its limbs, seas and mountains, and as its eyes come unstuck and open as the many suns in the sky. you are the blue of the sky, the quiet of the windless cosmos, the unheard sounds within the earth's core as it is formed. the universe is young, and so are you, and still you see it age and you see it die, right before your gaze, over and over again. time is nothing but a corner to peak behind, and it all unfolds and unfurls and clashes into itself until you hurt, but there is no way to experience it because where ever does the sky feel pain? where does a planet? phantom pain of the tragic history that has not happened yet haunts you wherever you shift and all the louder do you feel the ever-present hum of something older, greater than yourself, coming from within you.

you are an angel, a being created of love, for love, a throwaway idea in the forming of the world. they will need someone to look after them. and that is who you are even if you yourself do not know it yet. even if you yourself are still learning the way through existence, even if you still wander and get lost in trying to grasp all that you know, all that you feel, all that you see. they begin as ants and they too become gods, one day you realise as you ponder the earth and for the first time overcome the sound of rubble of its mass, and overhear the first sound of life, and soon more follow. there is laughter, there are songs, there is work. small they are but still so mighty. they flash before your eyes and you can hardly focus before they expire and new ones take their place. your head would spin, but still you are no more than the sky, the lone ray of light, the rustling of leaves in the wind.

you are still that when you hear her crying. a creature still smaller than the ants you've known. a child alone in the woods. at first you cannot even find her, though the sound pierces all the way through to you, the trees do not come apart and make for a barrier stronger than the dreams and nightmares that haunt her at night when she stops stumbling and goes quiet. there is a man there, though he is no longer, her very mind charms up images of him that you can just about touch because they are as real, as physical as you, a ray of moonlight peeking at last through the overgrowth. the man you learn to know by heart, the curls of his hair, the lines around his eyes, the calm of his voice. for the first time you focus and you can see him, all of him, for the first time an ant is given a face.

you are a newborn creature, struggling to get up from the mud that gave you form by the riverside. your legs supported by bones made out of naked white roots the water has come to uncover, struggle to hold your weight for you were weightless, once. you are wet and scary looking, and still when you call and his voice comes out, the child looks up. eyes so wide, you can tell she knows something is not quite right, but when you reach your hand out, and she reaches out hers, you know she trusts you to mean well. you know there is a settlement beyond the woods, you have seen the lights. you walk together, at first silent, later talking, and when she gets tired at night, you carry her yourself and when you do, her hand settles on your chest. the imprint is an anchor. the body is yours.

you are a thing of light, sharp and white, clasped within a clump of cold damp earth. sometimes you can feel it burning through the strata at night, sometimes it spills from your eyes, from your fingertips, between your ribs. sometimes the light wants to return to the sky, yet you know more than anything they need you here, emmanuel. a thing of god among them, or at least his hand, his shoulder, brought to life by the lowly mud from the riverside. the universe still twists around you, and you still can feel it coming to life and dying with every step you take, and there is no cure for it but love. the overwhelming sense of it when you close your eyes, when you touch the earth, when you find that god speaks to you no longer but your mind carries the echo of all of them, everywhere. your ants, your humans.

you are their emmanuel. that is enough.